


Winter Gods

by my_name_is_Levi



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Angst, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Immortality, Immortals, M/M, Slow Burn, tragic backstory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-09-22 08:17:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9595871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/my_name_is_Levi/pseuds/my_name_is_Levi
Summary: There's a legend about the origins of ice skating that very few, very peculiar individuals know.  It started a millennia ago, with a boy who charmed the gods with his smile.  He had been the first of the ice skaters, when the gods gifted him with golden blades beneath his shoes.  The first, but not the last.Over a length of time, other wanders had ventured across the strange perpetually frozen lake, and found themselves gliding on silver blades alongside a beautiful boy with a perfect smile.  And so there were many of them, once.  A family.But over time, the first skater's smile became a thing of incomparable beauty, aimed no longer at the gods.  He had fallen in love, desperately, beautifully, messily.  Enraptured by a boy with a much quieter sort of beauty.But the gods festered with their jealousy, with their pride.  They swore retribution against the lovers.This is the story of a man cursed with Immortality after the gods took his lover from him, damning him to an eternity of meeting his love again and again, loving him and losing him.





	1. Yuuri Katsuki

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Winter Gods was initially inspired by [Everlasting End](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9078427) by Ashida. Go check it out if you'd like! It's a wonderful one shot.

The day that Victor Nikiforov met Katsuki Yuuri had been a snowy, pretty one.

In the heart of winter in St. Petersburg, Russia, Victor was a young boy.  He was tall for his age, taller than most of the boys in his grade.  Leaner too, tall and thin and pretty.  A soft, lovely face and eyes so bright and brilliant that it softened the hearts of all who observed him.  And his hair.  Oh, his hair was like pure silver, melted down and strung into the silkiest of threads.  He was the envy of many girls, and the victim of many boys’ taunting.  Too beautiful for his own good, willowy and elegant.  Too unlike the gruffer boys at school who resembled their heavyset, stone-faced fathers.

He’d been walking home from school the day it happened.  Just beyond the school doors, jacket wrapped tight around his small frame to keep the cold out.  His shoes crunched noisily in the snow, but it was not the only set of footsteps in the snow.  He heard them loud and clear before he turned to look.  They didn’t bother trying to be quiet.  They always liked it better when he turned to look at them first, saved them the trouble of getting his attention.

Today had been a particular day, and so Victor had been expecting them.  He’d heard in school, how one of the main goons, Alexei Sokolov, a short and stout boy with a plump face and dark hair and already an awkward dusting of hair across his upper lip.  He’d had asked a girl out today at lunch, only to be brutally rejected.  The girl in question had instead proclaimed that she only had eyes for a certain silver-haired boy.

It really hadn’t been his fault.    
__  
He hadn’t done anything _wrong._  
  
 But pride and jealousy were strange and maliciously intertwined concepts, he’d found with boys like Alexei.

So when he heard their footsteps after him, he couldn’t help the pinch in his lungs, the inevitable fate ahead of him.  Alexei was one man-child in a five part man-child gang.  Victor could try to outrun them, and surely he would succeed, but they would get him at some point, eventually.  They always did.

“Nikiforov,” Alexei called out to him where he had stopped walking.

Victor only half turned to look.

Alexei’s smile was feral.  “Play with us, Nikiforov.  Let’s play a game.”

Victor wasn’t by any means a stupid child.  He had learned quickly how brutal life was to soft, stupid children.

“What kind of game?”  He already knew the answer to that, but it would give him a few more seconds to brace himself.

“Wolf.”  The bulky boy answered, grinning as though the stupid name was clever.  Dumb as a brick, he was.  Strong and intimidating, but hardly intelligent.  Victor had talked himself out of a few tricky situations before, but this was beyond his help.

“I don’t think I want to play your game, Alexei.”  Victor replied, calm, quiet, even toned.  Fear was something they fed off of.  Confidence was something they snapped at.  If he managed to stay collected, sometimes it dulled the chase.  Sometimes.

It wasn’t enough today.

“ _Get him.”_  Alexei snarled to his goons, and at once they fumbled for him.

Victor took off as fast as he could.

Where though?  Where could he go?

Icy winds seared Victor’s cheeks as he sprinted away, his long nimble legs carrying him quickly.  Snow drifted through the air, and he tried not to breathe too much in.  Tried to keep his breathing even, or the cold air would freeze in his throat.

Winters in Russia were brutal, unkind, cruel.  Winters in Russia were exactly like the people living there.  Like the boys that chased him through the streets.  Like the snow and the ice and the car that had killed his parents.  Like the unforgiving cold that crept into the houses of many good people, many warm and kind and merciful people, and took their lives.  Leaving kids like Yurio, like Georgi and Mila and himself alone.  All alone.  Left them in the care of an orphanage, left them to take care of each other, their only parental figure was a stiff old man, who always meant well but never quite knew how to express it, named Yakov.

“Don’t let him get away!”  Came the shouts that chased him.  And he pushed and pushed, his feet carrying him as fast and far away as they could.  Feet bounding through building snow, trying to duck his face further into his jacket before the cold bit his nose.

Victor was twelve years old at this time.  Very much alone in the world, very small in the bigness of it all.  And he didn’t mind it, usually.  Didn’t mind that he was small.  He just wished, more often than not, that he could feel less alone in the vast nothingness.

So he ran.  And ran and ran.  The sun touching down on the horizon too quickly, sinking and sinking, and Victor knew with a sinking heart that the city would grow pitch black soon.  But he couldn’t take them back with him, couldn’t lead trouble like this to Yakov’s door.  Boys like them would go home to vicious, influential fathers who would somehow blame Yakov for whatever they claimed Victor had done this time.

He had to shake them, or face them.  He didn’t want the latter.

But he was running out of energy, running out of time, his legs ached and his lungs ached and the snow and frozen air burned against his cheeks.

Victor stole away into a local playground, hiding himself behind one of the old toys.  He panted desperately into his hands, trying to get as much air in as possible but trying with all his might to be quiet.  If they found him, it was all over.  He’d have to face them.

And find him they did.  He heard their shouts as they ran towards the playground, didn’t see him yet as they flooded inside the gate.  Their heavy, clunky footsteps were unmistakable, even when Victor didn’t dare turn to see their faces.  His heart pounded treacherously in his chest as they neared, so loud and strained he was terrified they’d hear it.  He tried to hold his breath, tried to clutch his hands over his chest as if they could silence his pounding heart.

He was afraid.

“There!”  One of them shouted.

Victor’s heart plummeted.  He felt it drop somewhere far, far down into his chest where he didn’t know he’d ever be able to pull it back from.

His body froze, stiffened.   _No. Please no._

A hand yanked him up, out of his hiding spot, and tossed him like a stone to the ground where everyone could better see him.  Victor peered at the sky from where he lay, tried to steal himself against the pain.  The sky was so, so bright.  Agonizing gray-white, it almost hurt to look directly into it.

But then Alexei’s face blocked his vision, that disgusting smirk flashing across his face.  So smug.

He grabbed Victor’s hair, yanked.  Victor tried not to cry out as he was pulled back to his feet by his silver strands.  Tried to get up quickly, before he could rip it out.

He watched with near teary eyes as a few long, lovely strands fell from Alexei’s grasp and to the snowy ground when he finally let go.

There was no warning when Alexei threw the first punch.  It knocked him sideways, flung him back against the snow covered gravel.  Victor covered his head, clenched his hair close to keep them from stepping on it.  Curled his body in on itself, to absorb more of their kicking feet in his sides and legs.  And kick and kick and kick they did.  Hard, thick boots plowed into his thin body.  Vicious words were showered over him by filthy tongues.  Insults, curses, hate of a kind Victor had never dared wish upon anyone else.

Victor drowned in it.  Their cruel words, and kicks and punches.  One of them grabbed him by his coat and ripped him sideways, then sat on his chest just to nail him repeatedly in the face with their fists.

Alexei was laughing somewhere up above him, cackling like this was satisfying to him.  Some of the boys were cheering them on, all the boots and fists and kicks.  Victor was motionless beneath them, unable to fight.  But he was soundless too, able at the very least to not give them the satisfaction of hearing his agony.

Victor’s vision was swimming soon enough, black and then staring into a cloudy white sky, and then a fist bit into his face before he once more saw black.  Something was dripping from his nose, something warm and it was splattering down his cheeks too.  But he felt beaten, completely.  Those hands bit hard into his face, bloodied him, ripping apart his skin, shredded flesh until their knuckles were torn and blood mixed with blood but mostly just Victors.

He wasn’t sure he was breathing.

 _“Enough!”_ Distantly, Victor heard yelling.  But he felt as though he were hearing things from underwater.  Warped and far away, and irrelevant to him.  His vision was fading out fast, and he felt a little like he was floating away from the pain that throbbed _everywhere_.

 _“Get away from him!”_ A voice, hard and scolding and fierce.  A reprimanding that Victor somehow felt across his bones, a scolding that resulted in guilt, whether you had done anything wrong or not.

The boys froze at that voice, beyond Victor’s line of sight.  All of them, stunned by the authority there.  And then the quickly approaching figure stepped close to them, and they bolted.  Out the main gate and vanishing into the streets, as though they’d done nothing wrong at all.

The man went for Victor, who lay unmoving on the ground.  A stranger.  Victor had never heard his voice before, but in an odd way something deep within him murmured recognition.  Only a murmur, so quiet and lost within the blood and bruises and blankness that rang in his mind, that he forgot the feeling before he’d really felt it.

“Oh my,” the stranger breathed, taking in the aftermath.  “Little one, let’s get you someplace warm.”

Victor blacks out soon after that.

  


*            *           *

 

 

When Victor wakes, his body feels like it’s been through the wringer.  He’s aching _everywhere_ , and his face feels absolutely busted.  He’s not sure he wants to know what he looks like, because it can’t be much worse than what it feels like, but somehow he thinks that looking at it might make it worse.

He can’t help the groan that leaves his lips at the throb that goes through him.

“Awake, little one?”  A voice comes from some place near.

Victor’s eyes crack open quickly, tries to raise himself up onto his arms.  But his body protests in a million places, and he falls hard back onto the bed beneath him.

“Easy, easy,” the voice soothes, closer now than before.  “I’m not going to hurt you.  I’ll introduce myself in a moment.”

There’s some shuffling, and the sound of objects being set on a table or counter sounds out.  Victor listens hard, for anything strange, anything that he shouldn’t hear.  He opens his eyes again, finds it slightly hard but he manages.  He must’ve gotten hit a little too close to his eyes, then, but finds when he lifts a hand to his face that his eyelids are normal.  Just the skin below the arch of his eyebrow is bitten and nipped with cuts and half-moons where knuckles had dug, but his eyes remained unscathed thankfully.

Glancing around the strange space, Victor observes a small room.  He’s lying on a bed, he feels with his fingers, but as he sits up just a little, he sees it’s more of a cot.  The room is near vacant, of anything but the cot and a desk in the corner, and a small kitchen lining the other half of the compact space.  It’s not a house.  It hardly even looks like an apartment.  It’s a shed, if anything.  About the size of Victor’s own bedroom, that he shared with Yuri.

And then he laid eyes on the stranger.

It was a man.  A man who did not seem completely a man.  He was young, maybe mid-twenties.  Black hair and pink lips and rounded glasses.  Tall and lean, and slight, even.  A foreigner.  Japanese, Victor could guess.  So very different from himself, from everyone in town.

He was looking at Victor.  And those eyes.  Victor looked into those eyes, and his breath caught and his heart puttered and time stopped on a dime.  Beautiful.  If Victor’s blue eyes were lovely, then this man’s eyes were treasure.  A shade of brown and gold and warmth that was surely coveted, desired by many, inachievable by all but a very lucky few.

But those eyes were old.  So very old.  The depth of them was unfathomable to Victor, who could only peer into them and be swallowed by the endlessness.

And he was smiling at Victor.

“Hello,” he said, the foreigner said in perfect Russian.  He’d been _talking_ in perfect Russian this entire time.  “My name is Yuuri Katsuki.”

Victor couldn’t find the words.


	2. Bedtime Stories

 

“Hello,” he said, the foreigner said in perfect Russian. He’d been _talking_ in perfect Russian this entire time. “My name is Yuuri Katsuki.”

Victor couldn’t find the words.

  
The man, Yuuri Katsuki, was standing at Victor’s bedside. A wet cloth in his hands, one that he extended to Victor. “Here,” he said, that smile unwavering. Polite, kind. _Sad._ Those eyes were compounded sorrow, centuries of agony, an existence without hope.

But Victor blinked, just once, and all that endless chaos and unfathomable depth was hidden from him.

The cloth was set in Victor’s unmoving hands. Snapped from his stupor at the feel of the warm dampness, he lifted the cloth with a silent question.

“You still have patches of dried blood here and there,” Yuuri explained. He wrung his empty hands, peering over the damaged skin almost guiltily. “I did the best I could to patch you up, but mostly there were just so many gashes. There wasn’t a lot to be done.”

Victor lifted the cloth to his face, felt the sting somewhat distantly but his attention was elsewhere. On the man standing in front of him. _A foreigner,_ Victor thought in awe. Were all foreigners this handsome? Did they all have beautiful eyes like his? Were they all as kind as this young man?  
Victor was enthralled instantly.

“Yuuri Katsuki.” Victor repeated, testing the name on his tongue, already forgetting the stranger's words about fixing him up.

Startled, Yuuri’s eyes widened fractionally.

“Yuuri Katsuki, where are you from?” Victor asked, and he smiled while he said it, ignoring how the grin yanked at the scabbing cuts on his lip. “Where did you learn Russian, Yuuri Katsuki?”

 _Yuuri Katsuki. Yuuri Katsuki. Yuuri Katsuki._ He was giddy at the name. So pretty, so different, so warm on his tongue. Victor loved it.

The older man’s eyes softened slowly at Victor, that same strange smile rested back on his lips. A smile to match the quiet sadness in those beautiful eyes. Yuuri pulled the chair out from the desk and over towards the bed, seating himself in front of the silver haired boy.

“I’m from Japan.” Yuuri told Victor gently. “From a small town called Hasetsu.”

“Hasetsu?” Victor questions. “I’ve never heard of it.”

Yuuri’s smile never wavers. But something in those eyes do. “Not many people have. It’s small.” His fingers flex on his kneecaps. “I learned Russian when I was young. From a Russian traveler, who was wandering the world.”

“A Russian traveler?” Awestruck, half by the Japanese man’s words and half by the soothing voice he used to speak them. Yuuri had a lovely voice. Low and soft and gentle.

Yuuri hummed in agreement. “He was an old man then. But he was staying in Hasetsu for some time, resting from his travels.” Yuuri cast his mind back, searching for a face. “I was very young and desperate to go out and see the world, which is how we became friends. The old man took pity on me and told me stories of his travels, stories of Russia. And along the way, because I knew very little of his language and he knew enough of mine, he taught me as much Russian as he could before he eventually moved on.”

Victor’s ears pricked at the name of his country. “Stories of Russia?” He asked. Yakov had many stories about Russia, because Yakov was very old. But he wondered excitedly if the traveler’s stories and Yakov’s stories were the same.

“Yes,” Yuuri nodded. “Among others, but Russia the most.”

Victor wanted to push for more. Wanted to ask Yuuri questions and hear all of his answers in that quiet, gentle voice. Wanted to see if Yuuri’s hair was as soft as it looked, or if the world looked vastly different through the frames of his glasses. Victor wanted to grab Yuuri’s hands and be excited for no other reason than because he was with a charming foreigner with lovely eyes and a sad smile and a voice like a lullaby. But Yuuri cast a look down at his watch, and he knew the words before he heard them.

“It’s late, little one. Let’s get you home, before someone gets worried.” In Yuuri’s tone, Victor knew he had only the best intentions. Knew that Yuuri was certainly as kind as they come, but he wanted to be selfish right then. This moment felt important, somehow. Like if he let Yuuri go too quickly, he might vanish in the wind.  
Victor tried not to pout. He was twelve years old at this point, too old for temper tantrums. Yakov still scolded little Yuri all the time for raising hell over spilled juice.

Yuuri stood from the chair, pushed it back in front of the desk. Victor had to tilt his head back to peer into the older man’s face, to watch his ever shifting expressions. But in the dimly lit room, all Victor could see were shadows streaking through those old eyes, caressing the lines of his face—a darkness that seemed to seep out from beneath his skin.

 

* * *

 

Yuuri Katsuki walked Victor Nikiforov back to the orphanage through the dark. Victor led them with quiet instructions, still bright and buzzing at Yuuri’s side but quiet as though to be cautious toward anyone who might overheard them.

 

There were strange moments, when they first began walking, where Yuuri’s hand seemed to flex oddly at his side. As though reaching for someone else’s hand, as though out of habit. But Victor never noticed when Yuuri would pull his hand back quickly, expression growing darker with each time he repeated the old familiar gesture. They walked on in silence, the crunch of snow underfoot and the whistle of the breeze as their only companions.

Yakov’s orphanage was an isolated building, a few long miles away from town. When Yuuri first laid eyes on it, that night, it towered overhead, reminded him of an old sort of stronghold. It wasn’t so impressive as it was intimidating. Shadowy and dark, only a few lights on here and there within the house. It was silent as death, hulking and challenging. Some said it was a lot like Yakov. Victor would agree. Unwelcoming on the outside, rough and unapproachable. But on the inside it was warm, friendly where the children played and laughed and lived.

“Yakov!” Victor sprinted messily towards the front door, banging noisily against it. He’d been limping slightly the whole way there, no doubt still aching from the beating he took earlier that day.

Somewhere within the house, Yuuri heard shouting. The bustling shouts of young children, and the roar of an older man. Even from outside, Yuuri smiled into the high collar of his jacket, listening to the rampant fumble of feet on a staircase that must’ve lied just behind the front door.

The locks clicked, and Yuuri watched from just a few feet behind as Victor grinned back at him. The door pulled open, and behind it stood an old man with a large, age worn face and thinning gray hair. His mouth was pulled back in a sort of snarl, and Yuuri could see the scolding there before the words could exit.

But the light fell over Victor’s face, and all the words died on Yakov’s lips.

“Vitya,” Yakov whispered. Yuuri tried not to look, tried not to watch all the private emotions that flickered across the old man’s face. But there they were, the shock, the grief, the worry.

Yakov shoved the door back further, snapping at the small children around him to stay back. The old man pulled Victor inside by the arm, only pulling lightly. Yuuri could see the care in that grip, the love of a father to his son, even if they were not related.

Victor paused though, which halted Yakov. “Yuuri Katsuki,” he said to Yuuri. “Come inside.”

Yuuri pulled down the high collar on his jacket with a finger, allowed Yakov to look over his face. Identifying himself, a show of goodwill. But Yakov squinted in suspicion. “Who are you?” He barked, pulling Victor closer to himself.

Yuuri opened his mouth, not knowing what he was about to say to that. But Victor was faster, and the young boy babbled excitedly in his stead. “Yakov, this is Yuuri Katsuki. He’s from Japan.” He was looking at the other kids as he said this, eyes animated. “He saved me from that jackas—”

“Vitya!” Yakov scolded.

“From Alexei and his goons.” Victor finished, unfazed.

Yakov fixed Yuuri with a calculating look. One that warned of danger if he dared try anything. But Yuuri was steady beneath his gaze, calm and cool. Expectant, if not a little glad that Yakov was so cautious. Yakov watched him for a long moment, just to watch him breath and blink and stare. Yuuri Katsuki met his gaze, knew he should go but couldn’t. Didn’t.

Yuuri Katsuki gave Yakov a quiet smile, one that was not so much shy as it was old and knowing. Yakov looked onto the stranger, the foreigner, and felt an echo of himself. An echo of age, and emotion, and an understanding that came with suffering.

Yuuri Katsuki…? Why did such a name sound eerily familiar to Yakov?

The snow fell still in trickles, stuck prettily in Yuuri’s hair as he waited patiently beyond the looming cover of the house.

“Okay,” Yakov said after a long pensive moment. “You’ll stay the night then. It’s too late to go back alone.”

Victor beamed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Yuuri Katsuki?” Yuri Plisetsky repeated, his mouth twisted in a near perpetually bittered expression, even for an nine year old. “I don't care who he is.  Why the hell is he here?”

Victor was unaffected by his younger friend’s scornful expression. He sat on the edge of his bed, legs pumping back and forth beneath him giddily. “I told you, Yura. He saved me!”

In the small bedroom, Yuri Plisetsky wasn’t the only younger kid piled around curiously. Mila and Georgi sat on Yuri’s bed, set against the opposite wall, both with expressions nearly as wonderstruck as Victor’s. A foreigner was as strange and exciting as a unicorn to the young kids.

Victor’s young face peered up at Yuuri, where Yuuri was seated on the edge of Victor’s bed beside the young boy. The silver-haired boy was settling down now, seemingly content just to stare up into the man’s soft face, into those beautiful old eyes. And Yuuri looked back at the young boy, staring with a gentle sort of fondness.

Strange, Victor thought. Yuuri was a perfect stranger, they knew so little about each other. But there was something so very steadying about Yuuri, so very familiar in a way that Victor didn’t know how to put to words. He was not like an older brother, not like a parent or guardian. Yuuri was lovely to look at, and his gentle words were soothing against Victor’s ears.

“Yuuri Katsuki,” Victor said, enjoying the way the name rolled off his tongue. “Will you tell us some of your stories? Some of the stories that the Russian traveler told you?”

“Stories?” Mila repeated, quizzically.

Victor nodded. “Yuuri is a traveler.” He informed them. And though he’d said it before, he repeated: “He’s from Japan.”

“We know where he’s from.” Yuri Plisetsky snapped impatiently. But despite his words, the small blonde child swung his body up onto his bed, crawling under the covers. Getting ready for a bedtime story.

The children began to follow suit. Victor went quickly to change from his day clothes into his night clothes, and came running back into the room. He was carrying a few candles, and a pack of matches, and he rushed to desk in the far corner of the small room to light them. Georgi rushed from the room next, returning quickly with small plates to set the candles on, to keep the wax from melting all over the desk.

And slowly, one by one, Victor lit each candle, set them each on plates, and Mila reached over to flick off the lights. The dark rushed in, and there was a quiet scramble for the beds as Yuuri’s eyes adjusted. Mila slipped into bed next to Yuri, and Victor made room for Georgi. And Yuuri, sat himself at the bottom of Victor’s bed, faced so that all the children could hear him.

The dark was thick and warm around the four children and the older foreigner. Warm, and strange that they should be so easily trusting of him, led him into the room by the hand. But Yuuri was like a benevolent spirit in the shadowy room, soft both in presence and speech. Victor couldn’t force himself not to trust Yuuri Katsuki if he tried, felt too enamored by him to be suspicious. And if Yakov trusted Yuuri enough to let him into their room, and if Victor had no suspicions, then all the other children were safe.

Dark, candle lit room. Lovely foreign man. A bedtime story from a traveler.

“A story, hmm?” Yuuri hummed beneath his breath.  
Yuuri knew a story. A Russian legend from an era long since passed, gods whose names had been long lost in the wind.

He shouldn’t tell it.

Victor’s silver hair glittered in the candlelight, his eyes gleaming. Content. A young boy with all the hope in the world living in his heart, with all the beauty that life could offer, with all the misfortune that fate could conjure.

Yuuri’s expression grew solemn in the darkened room. He shouldn’t. Shouldn’t, yet he would. He always would. Tell the tale that deserved to be told, deserved to known and repeated and made legend. Because it was a tale of humans and gods, of love and beauty and death and horrible things. It was a story of beginnings and endings and eternity.

It was a story. But most of all, it was the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/winter-gods) for the official Winter Gods tumblr account for updates on chapter releases and such!


	3. The Beginning

“Do you know the story,” Yuuri asked, and the room hushed beneath the peculiar pressure of his voice, “of how ice skating came to be?”

There was the faintest sound of rustling fabric, heads shaking back in forth in answer.  No one dared utter a word, as though the room would shatter in the aftermath of their clumsiness.

“Well,” Yuuri spoke.  “There's a legend about the origins of ice skating that very few, very peculiar individuals know.”

There was a pause.  As much for dramatic effect as it was for Yuuri, who could never manage to tell the truth quite right, the way it deserved to be told.

“It started a millennia ago, in a land plagued with sickness and cruelty, with a boy who was kind and fair, and loved his country of endless woods and eternal frost with all his heart.  It started with a boy who had charmed the gods with his smile.”  Yuuri watched the first drop of liquid wax slip from the top of the candlestick, the shadows that played in his eyes were masked by the way the light hit his glasses.

“One day the boy had gotten lost in the woods, in the falling snow during the night.  He wandered for hours, maybe even a day, until he reached a clearing.  An open field, fresh snow trailed on for maybe a mile in any direction.  And at the center of the field was a lake, completely frozen over.”  

“The clearing was something of magic.  So few people had ever stumbled upon it, and found themselves led away from it.  Animals did not tread on this peculiar ground.  Everything there was completely untouched, untampered with.  The young boy stepped into the open field, though, and he felt a pull.  A tug in his chest, beckoning him to the lakeside.  A summoning by something not quite human.”  The candles flickered their strange shadows across the walls of the small room.  Yuuri stared at them, watching them dance, as though the story was playing itself out there.  As though he could see it all happening.

“The boy went to the lake, just to stare out over the frozen water.  The frozen lake was a thing of surreal beauty, just like the boy himself.  It was frozen over perfectly, the ice must’ve gone feet deep, and purely solid.  There wasn’t a single scratch on the surface, not an indent or creature to be seen over or inside the surface.  Perfect ice.”  A pause.  “The boy didn’t know what he was supposed to do, why he felt pulled there.  But the pull didn’t end at the lakeside, it asked him to move closer, go further.”

“The boy stepped out onto the lake.  And then took another step.  The ice was safe, it didn’t give.  So he kept walking, further out on the lake, and then he was running.  And suddenly, he was _gliding._ Beneath his boots were these beautiful golden blades, running from toe to heel.  Ice skates.  The first of their kind.”  Yuuri smiled a little, and in the quiet light, it nearly took Victor’s breath.

“The boy kept skating, flying across the perfect ice with impossible grace, unbearable beauty, inhuman skill.  He was crying before he knew it, weeping as he skated, because he knew what this was.  Who had given him his skates, and led him to the lake, and allowed him to fly.”  Perfect silence fell, but unspoken questions swirled in the air.  “The gods had favorites, once upon a time.  They had never played fair.  Because when a god loved you, you were their favorite pet.  There for them to push and toy with and break, there for their amusement.”

 _Contempt_.  Yuuri’s voice bled with it, and Victor felt it echo through his chest.  Victor shuddered beneath his covers, bitten by a chill that wasn’t physical.  Georgi looked at him bewilderedly, but they were quickly wrapped up in Yuuri’s story once again.

“But,” Yuuri continued, voice softening again, “the gods loved the boy very much.  Enough, at the time, that they were enraptured by the boy’s beauty.  So they gave him everything.  When the boy fell asleep on the lakeside that night, when darkness fell and he did not know the way home, he woke in a small cottage.  A small, warm home, where a hot breakfast was waiting for him in the morning.”

“The cottage was built next to the lake, had all the luxuries of a home back in the village but this one was built on magic.  And so there he lived, for quite some time, where food was constantly restocking itself and the water in the faucet was always hot and clothes were supplied for him.  The only thing the gods asked in return, without ever really asking, was that he skate for them.  Every day he skated on that lake, spinning and flying and jumping, the ice always as solid and perfect as it had been the day he found it.  And it was his absolute pleasure to skate for them.”

“Until,” Yuuri’s voice shifted, “there came a day that the boy was resting beside the lake, and he saw something moving at the very edge of the field.  It had been the first time he’d heard or seen anything around the area since the day he came.  So the boy stood, and because he wasn’t on the ice, his skates had vanished.  He watched the shadow carefully, watched the figure slowly walk toward the clearing.  And when the stranger stepped into the sunlight, the boy froze.”

“Another boy.  He carried a travel bag on his back, and he wore heavy clothing, but he was nothing like the beautiful boy.  This boy, the stranger, was different.  A foreigner.  A boy who did not belong in the cruel and beautiful country that was Russia.”  Yuuri hesitated, only for a moment, but it was enough.  Victor stared at the foreigner at the edge of his bed, wondered at the story, wondered where Yuuri had heard it from.

“What are their names, Yuuri?”  Victor asked, because Yuuri seemed distracted for a moment.  Probably for the same reason that it would be difficult to tell a story about two boys without names.

Yuuri looked at him.  “What would you like to name them?”

Victor seemed to think for a long moment.  “The Russian boy will be Victor.  The foreign boy will be Yuuri Katsuki.”

Yuuri was still for a long moment.  Staring at Victor, staring through him.  Eyes just a little bit wide, just a little too sad.  And finally, Yuuri sighed quietly, going back to staring at the shadows.  “Alright then.”

 

* * *

 

_Hundreds of years before…_

 

When their gazes met, Yuuri couldn’t breathe.  From all the way across the snowy field, they locked eyes, and a million things ran through Yuuri’s mind all at once, and there was such a perfect silence in his head at the same time.  His body washed hot and cold, the world cleaving and coming together all at once.  All Yuuri could think was, _here.  This is it.  This is what I’ve been searching for._

A man.  Tall and lean, nimble-bodied and gorgeous.  Hair of perfect silver, eyes like the endless sky.  Russia embodied.  Beauty like the snowy mountains and frozen lakes and the merciless frost.

It was like looking into the face of a god.

As though in a trance, the man stumbled forward, towards Yuuri.  The beautiful Russian’s eyes were wide, a little dazed, and Yuuri was sure he looked just the same.  Yuuri stepped forward, and then he was walking.  Yuuri was walking, and the silver-haired man was walking, and within a moment or an eternity, they were face to face.

The cold bit viciously at Yuuri’s cheeks, pinched them pink.  The light trickle of snow fell prettily into Yuuri’s hair, like diamonds against the dark hair on his head.  The stranger looked similar, cheeks flushed a little pink and snowflakes highlighting his light hair.  But faced toward each other, there was a long moment of looking, searching, eyes pulling each other apart.

“Hello,” the silver haired man said, at last, cautiously.

Yuuri felt the word in his chest, heard the lilt and tone and pitch of the other man’s voice and it shook him, just a little.

“Hello,” Yuuri replied, quiet and careful.  It had been a long time since he’d spoken to anyone, let alone spoken in Russian.  He’d been walking for weeks and months, so long he’d lost count of the days.  So long, he supposed, that seeing another human being was like a dream.

“You…”  The Russian startled a little.  “You speak Russian?”

Yuuri nodded.  “Some.”

The man gave him a long, measuring look, his blue eyes sparkling.  The open field wrapped them in comfortable silence.  The beautiful brightness of the unblemished snow framed them, cast an ethereal glow around the Russian foreigner.  Yuuri couldn’t help but stare back.

There was a long stretch of neither of them saying anything at all.  There was a question in the field, in the air, in the world around them.  A question neither Yuuri nor the stranger heard, but felt.  This was a field warded off by the gods above, given only to the silver haired boy because they adored him.  But Yuuri… Yuuri who had no attachment to these gods, who was not from this land, did not belong here.  What had pulled him here?

“What’s your name?”  The blue eyed man asked.  The question wound itself around his ears and hands and fingers, so that he felt it but did not understand it.  The field would question and question, maybe to never get its answer.

But Yuuri smiled, a little shyly, and the stranger’s eyes seemed to follow every muscle movement of his face with pinpoint precision.

“My name is Yuuri Katsuki.”  Yuuri told him.

The stranger eyes flickered between emotions that Yuuri didn’t have the time to place with words.  Before he could ask his name in return, the stranger said his name.

“Yuuri Katsuki,” the stranger mimicked softly.

 _Yuuri Katsuki_ , his mind echoed.  Yes, that was him.  It had been a long time since he’d introduced himself to anyone.  Since anyone had ever said his name out loud.  Somehow, it made him feel warm.

“What’s your name?”  Yuuri asked.

The silver haired man returned Yuuri’s smile, then, as he said, “My name is Victor Nikiforov.”

That name.  Yuuri felt the name tuck itself into his chest, file away in his mind.  In Yuuri’s chest, he felt something say, _I know._

 

* * *

 

Victor Nikiforov was impossibly considerate for a stranger, a Russian stranger at that, since all Yuuri had heard about the people here was that they were rough, reserved people and they were suspicious of anyone and everyone who did not belong.  The Russian boy had led him inside the cottage soon after their meeting, and led him to a chair before vanishing into the kitchen.

Yuuri took off his jacket, and set down his pack beside him, suddenly bewildered by all that had just happened to him.  He’d been expecting a whole other day of travel before he hit the closest town, but along the way, he’d felt a vague pull.  He’d followed, a little unconsciously, and found himself at the threshold between a beautiful open field and the endless forests.  And now here he was, in a strange man’s house, warm enough that it could have been summertime out there.

When Victor returned, he was carrying two steaming bowls.  He was smiling a little bashfully, and Yuuri was instantly a little embarrassed too.  It was odd, perhaps, to pull a stranger into your home and bring them food without asking if they were hungry.  Maybe even more odd just to show up on someone’s property, looking travel-worn and weary, and introduce yourself but not apologize for the intrusion.

Neither of them mentioned the oddness of it all, though.  Victor simply handed Yuuri a bowl, and took a seat on a chair facing Yuuri.  It wasn’t until that moment that Yuuri realized he was _starving._ He couldn’t properly recall when he’d last eaten.  After all, around these parts, the animals were strangely sparse, and Yuuri’s trapping skills weren’t so effective when the trap would stick out like a sore thumb against the white snow.  He also didn’t think he’d properly slept in days, because every time he drifted off, the cold threatened to pull him under permanently.

Victor ate slowly, watching Yuuri devour the food like the starved man he was.  Victor had read it in the hollowness of his face, the dark lines marking beneath his eyes.  He’d seen it when they’d first came face to face.  The bright snow, the light sky, they’d only highlighted the shadows written into the foreigner’s flesh.  Traveling looked like it was taking its toll on the boy across from him.

They said nothing.  Victor took the bowl from Yuuri’s hands once he finished, and got him a second serving.  Yuuri didn’t ask.  Victor _knew_ he didn’t ask, but it seemed like the only thing to do.  It didn’t need to be asked.

When Yuuri finished his second bowl, and Victor finished his first, they finally looked at each other again.

Yuuri cleared his throat.  “Thank you for the food, and the hospitality.”  He knew he sounded unbearably awkward, but there was no other way he knew to put it.  This whole situation was strange and impossible, and Yuuri wondered more than once if he had fallen asleep in the snow on the journey to Russia, and he was currently dying from the cold.

Victor only dismissed the thanks.  “It’s no trouble.”

They fell into silence, and Yuuri was at a loss with how to fill it.  He didn’t know if he should go, be grateful for the generosity he was shown and move on, or if he should wait and stay.  He decided nothing, not wanting to act rashly before his host gave any signal for what he expected.

Victor eyed Yuuri’s soaked, tattered clothes.  He eyed the streaks of dirt smeared here and there across his skin, his neck, his face, the exposed skin of his hands.  He wondered just how long Yuuri had gone without a shower, without a proper place to rest.  He wondered how long he’d been on his own, wandering.  Wondered what it was that propelled him to wander.

“You can take a shower here.”  Victor told him, more of a command than an offer.

“What?”  Yuuri started, alarmed.  “No, no, I don’t want to overstay my welcom—”

“You aren’t.”  Victor cut in smoothly.  His blue eyes darkened, just a little, almost as if in challenge.  Daring Yuuri to say no again. “I insist.”

Yuuri scanned the taller man’s face for any hint of something else, for any hesitation or reluctance.  The first sign of intrusion and Yuuri would be well out the door.  But there was nothing there, nothing but expectation in that face.  A beautiful boy, used to getting his way.

Taking his silence as acceptance, Victor said, “Come on.  I’ll show you where it is.”

The bathroom was inside the bedroom, and Yuuri made sure not to look at anything within the room.  This definitely felt like intrusion, being in this man’s _bedroom_.  But once again, the Russian man made no indication that he was bothered by this.

Yuuri followed Victor inside the bathroom, and Victor instructed him simply.  “Strip.”  Yuuri didn’t know anything about how to handle this sort of order, this degree of unabashed bluntness.  So he did only what he was told, and began peeling off his layers starting with his tops and shirts.  Victor left the room briefly, returning just as Yuuri finished peeling off his last shirt.  He set a pair of fresh clothes on the counter’s edge, and Yuuri tried not to notice the way Victor skimmed over his bare chest with his eyes.  Yuuri tried not to notice himself, the way his skin stretched tight over his bones.  Muscular, certainly from all the hiking and traveling he’d done over the past year or so, but he hadn’t ever been able eaten enough to pack meat on his bones.

Victor turned a knob on the wall connected to the tub, and then steaming water was pouring from a metal contraption close up by the ceiling.  Yuuri had never seen anything like it, had never seen a bathroom quite like this.  The tubs in his hometown were much different, and there were no strange knobs on the walls, or metal pieces by the ceiling that spit out water.   _Hot_ water, at that.  Water in his hometown was always boiled before anyone soaked in tubs.

Victor turned his cold eyes back on Yuuri, and he gave a little smile before turning and going.  He shut the door behind him.

Yuuri, astounded by the fact that so much water could pour out and still be this hot, probably spent too long in the heat.  But he scrubbed himself clean, and then once more, because he didn’t know how long he’d gone since he’d properly bathed, and didn’t know when it might happen again.

And then when Yuuri tried to shut the water off, turning the knob like he’d seen the stranger do, the water just burned hotter and nearly seared Yuuri’s skin.  He fumbled with the other knob, and the water became icy cold.

Terrified by the contraption, Yuuri jumped out of the tub, and turned both knobs opposite of where he’d been turning them.  Eventually, he got the water to stop, but at this point his skin felt too hot in some places, too cold in others from his experiments.  He sighed heavily, never knowing bathing to be such a taxing experience.

Yuuri tried on Victor’s clothes, finding them to be a little big on him.  But Yuuri was thinner in shoulder width, and shorter in stature, so this was to be expected.  Except, staring into the mirror, in such baggy clothing, it only made him look thinner than he already was.  Like a man who had once been a generous size, and had withered away to bone.

When he finally stepped out of the bathroom, Victor was sitting on the edge of his bed.  His eyes met Yuuri’s right away, met them and then dropped to where Victor’s clothes hung loosely off of him.

“Yuuri Katsuki,” Victor said, eyes still taking in the narrowness of Yuuri’s body.  “Stay for dinner.”

Again.  Not a request, not an offer.  A command.

Yuuri only stared.  Silent until Victor looked up into his face again.  There was something a little cold, a little lonely in Victor’s face.  There was something a little grateful, a little relieved in Yuuri’s.

“Okay,” he said softly, and Victor smiled.  

 

* * *

 

The two young men ate together quietly.  It was starting to show in Yuuri’s face just how wrung out he was.  It was in the heaviness of his gaze, the prominent rings beneath his eyes.  But he thanked Victor for the food, for the hospitality, for everything, when he was handed his plate.  Victor only dismissed him again.

“Yuuri Katsuki,” Victor addressed him once he’d eaten most of the food off his plate.  “Where are you from?”

Yuuri swallowed whatever was in his mouth.  He looked at Victor, into a pale face and cold blue eyes and an expression that was too carefully arranged.  “Japan,” Yuuri answered after a moment.  “From a small town named Hasetsu.”

Victor seemed to warm to the name.  “I’ve heard of it.”

Yuuri nodded.  “It’s a small, up-and-coming town by the sea.  It’s becoming popular for these things called ‘hot springs’ because of all the natural hot water spouts.”

Victor seemed to visibly relax the more Yuuri talked.  An easy smile settled on his face, and his eyes warmed a little.  But Yuuri was talking, trying to describe in his limited Russian vocabulary about the town he called home, so he didn’t catch the change.

“You speak Russian very well.”  Victor commented.  And he did, if even just a little rough.  There were some things he had obviously never anticipated having to say, and thus never practiced.  But in common conversation, Yuuri was fluent enough.  “How did you learn?”

“Ah, thank you.”  Yuuri smiled a little.  He told him about the Russian traveler that had visited his town when he was very little, and stayed for many months at his parent’s onsen.  Yuuri’s parents let him stay for free, because of his services toward Yuuri.  He’d taught him Russian, taught him survival techniques, told him everything he’d learned on his journeys.  Including, Yuuri never told his parents, where to find the more hygienic brothels and how to be sure he wasn’t being cheated out of his money, or stolen from.  Yuuri didn’t think he’d ever actually need to know, but he’d wrote the information down along with anyone else, just in case.

Victor listened attentively to every word, hanging off of them.  He laughed at some of the stories Yuuri told him, grinning amusedly or nodding thoughtfully nearly anytime else.  He found Yuuri’s accent charming, his fluency with Russian was surprising considering how short of a time the traveler had spent with him, and how long it had been since.

Victor asked him lots of questions, and Yuuri caught on that Victor wanted him to keep talking.  So he did.  It had been such a long time since he’d talked to anyone else, longer since he’d talked openly over a meal with someone.  He felt warm, talking to Victor, telling him stories.  Warmer everytime Victor laughed at something he said, and he appreciated the few times Victor had corrected his pronunciation.

The sun had gone down outside, and a fire had started up in the fire place without either of them moving to light it.  Yuuri didn’t mention it, because Victor didn’t.  It was as if the self-lighting fire didn’t faze him at all.

Yuuri didn’t freak out.  Knew that this wasn’t a natural occurrence, but he remembered the Russian traveler who had taught him all he knew about Russia.  About gods who tampered with mortals, gods who played favorites, and gods who loved mortals and gave them immortality, and gods who loved mortals and broke them.  Yuuri suspected, felt intuitively that there was definitely a divine hand in this home.  He said nothing about it.

Eventually, after many stories from Yuuri and moments where Victor clutched at his stomach and went soundless from how hard he was laughing, they settled into a strange silence.  It had began as something content, where they were both warm and relaxed in each other’s company.  But slowly, the expression on Victor’s face went cold again.  Cold, sad, tired.  He stared into his empty cup, and Yuuri watched on quietly.

There was something very lonely about the cottage, despite it’s beauty and efficiency.  Maybe it was the way the wind whistled against the windows, and the night pressed it’s dark palms flat to the glass so they could see nothing through them.  Maybe it was that the cottage was a little big for one person, a little too small for two.  Maybe it was because the silence was deafening.

Yuuri knew loneliness well.  He’d spent long enough without anyone else’s company, without the comfort of another human being, without the luxury of someone to fill the overwhelming silence.  It had driven Yuuri mad at times, to the point where even his own humming buzzed irritably in his own ears.  But talking to himself burned horribly in his ears, wrong in his throat, aching in his chest.  There was no cure to isolation but company.

“Yuuri,” Victor said after quite a long time in silence, and his voice was strange and slow when he said it.  As if to hold it out, as if to hang on to it—to him.  “Stay the night.”

The fire crackled as Yuuri stood from his seat, gently took Victor’s mug from his hands.  Victor looked up as the cup slipped from his grasp, something flashing in his eyes that Yuuri had no time to read.

But there was a gentleness to Yuuri’s expression.  A smile that was soft as it was warm, and it wasn't sad.  He smiled, and Victor knew he understood.

“Okay,” Yuuri told him, and then he walked into the kitchen to set their dishes in the sink.  He didn’t look back, but maybe he should have.

Victor watched him go, a hand over his chest.  Over his heart.  That smile burning itself into Victor’s memory, where he would never let himself forget it.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright friends, so I realize that if the real beginning of this story was set hundreds to a thousand years ago, then their bathrooms and showers aren't the same. But, lets just assume the gods are way far ahead of their time their knowledge of home decor and bathroom construction is a thing of the twenty first century, for the sake of the story. Thanks :)


	4. Five Years Later

 

_Now…_

 

Yuuri told the story until he couldn’t bare to continue, until he thought that it was too soon to tell the truth.

But Yuuri didn’t lie.  He told the story until things were perfect, until the legend of the skaters hit its peak, and he left it there.  A happy ending.  A happily ever after, where the young skaters got to have their happiness and their beautiful mortality, and bathed in every perfect moment like it would be their last.  Yuuri nearly felt compelled to apologize to Victor, though he wouldn’t understand what for.

 _Someday,_ Yuuri told himself.  He would finish the story someday, finish telling Victor the truth.  The truth about a mortal who had given everything up for an immortal love.  The truth about a mortal who had everything taken from him, the price for an immortal life he hadn’t wanted.

The other kids drifted to sleep in the moments after Yuuri finished.  But when he turned around, tore his eyes away from the candles and their dancing flames at last, Victor was staring at him.  The silver haired boy was sitting up a little, looking over at Yuuri silently.

“Yuuri,” Victor said quietly, a whisper in the soundless room.  “How long have you been traveling?”

It didn’t sound like the question Victor actually wanted to ask, but it was the one he uttered out loud.  So, with his old eyes and melancholy smile, he answered.

“A very, very long time.”

“How old are you?”

“Very, very old.”

Victor gave him a scolding look.  “Yuuri.”

Yuuri chuckled.  “Twenty four, little one.”

Victor paused at that.  Yuuri _did_ look twenty four, but he didn’t _feel_ like it.  There was something about Yuuri that reminded Victor of Yakov.  Something very vague, imprecise.  Perhaps it was something old, something sad.  Perhaps Yuuri had lost someone along the way that made him like this.

“Yuuri,” Victor said again, but Yuuri was already getting to his feet.

“Victor.”  Yuuri said, a steady sort of command in his voice.  Not harsh, but assertive.  An authority, Victor supposed, that came with age and experience, and Yuuri wielded it well.

Yuuri came over and gave Victor’s hand a squeeze, face hidden in the darkness.  “Go to sleep, little one.”

And then Yuuri’s hand was gone, the candles blown out, the faint smell of smoke floating through the room.  Victor’s mind slowed, words connecting too slowly.  A question he wasn’t quick enough to ask, before the door closed behind Yuuri.

_Will you be here when I wake up?_

 

* * *

 

Yakov was waiting for Yuuri outside the bedroom door, the old man leaning against the wall beside the door.  Yuuri wasn’t surprised, he’d expected it, even.  This sort of protectiveness.  Yakov was a good man for it, the best man play father to these abandoned kids.

“Yuuri Katsuki.”  Yakov said to him, arms crossed over his chest and his expression lost in the shadows of the hallway.  “I have heard that story before.”

Yuuri was still.  Utterly, completely still.  His heart paused in his chest.

“You didn’t finish it.”

Yuuri didn’t know what to say.  A legend was a legend.  The truth was the truth.  But somehow… somehow he did not expect it to come full circle again.  Did not expect the past to catch up with him.  Did not expect anyone to remain that had heard it told.

“I know.”  Yuuri said.  He could manage nothing more.

Yakov nodded, a slight movement in the dark.  He sighed.

“He is young now.  But will you come back for him?  Will you be there when he is grown?”

Yuuri’s heart was a feeble thing.  His heart was cold, the only way to keep the pieces together in their mold.  And every time, every single time, his heart only got colder.  The Victor that he had known, had met that very first day in the open field, was getting farther and farther from him.

“He doesn’t understand it yet.  What confines him to me.  He deserves to know what it is to be free, so that he won’t grow to hate me later on.”  Yuuri’s words were frozen.  Agony preserved in ice.  Cynicism that came from too long a life, his suffering too drawn out.

But a smile touched on Yuuri’s lips that Yakov didn’t see, but heard.  A smile too bitter, too perpetually grieved to be mortal.  “But yes,” he said.  “I will come back.  And I will stay when he asks me to.”

Yuuri sighed, then.  “I always do.”

Yakov was only a mortal.  A mortal who knew a little about the old gods, about the old ways.  He had heard of Yuuri Katsuki through these old stories, legends passed from mouth to mouth.  Sometimes he went nameless, sometimes his name was distorted, and sometimes he was as he is: Yuuri Katsuki.

“You must be tired, Yuuri Katsuki.”  Yakov said at last.  “I’ll show you to your room.”

But neither of them moved for a long moment.  Yakov seemed to have something else to ask, and Yuuri seemed to have something else to say.  But both were old men, if not physically than in all other senses of the word.  So they held their tongues, and let the silence wash over them instead.

Yakov led him away, some time after that.  Tired himself, just from the heavy company of an Immortal worn down by his years.

“Yakov,” Yuuri said, when Yakov turned to leave him for the night.  “You are a good man.  I’m very glad that you were the one to raise Victor this time.”

From a mortal man, it meant nothing.  From an immortal, from someone who had spent centuries bound to a mortal and had watched him grow up in hundreds of different ways under hundreds of different hands—Yakov could imagine no higher praise.

There was no right thing to say to that.  So he did not try.

Yakov shut the door behind him when he left, and knew that Yuuri would not be there in the morning.

 

* * *

 

_Hundreds of years before…_

 

Yuuri slept on Victor’s couch that night.  But Victor couldn’t sleep through the night, troubled for reasons he couldn’t admit to, and went into the living room to sit by the fire instead.  Only, once he got to the living room, he saw Yuuri lying there under the blanket that Victor had given him, looking comfortable and well at ease on the couch.  He would sleep better on that couch than he had anywhere else in months, but still, for Victor who slept in the most comfortable bed in the world, most likely, he was instantly uncomfortable with the idea of Yuuri sleeping on the couch.

It was late.  He’d had a long day.  And maybe that was what he’d told himself to excuse his actions for what he did next, but really he had no excuse.  He scooped Yuuri up off the couch, the boney boy too light in his arms, and carried him into his bedroom.  He set Yuuri’s body on his bed, under the covers, and even, pathetically, tucked him in.

He then decided he’d done enough rash things that night, and went back to the living room.  And for other reasons, the arrangement made him feel better.  He hadn’t asked Yuuri to be there in the morning, and all night he’d regretted it.  At least this way, Victor thought, if Yuuri tried to leave in the middle of the night, Victor had a better chance of waking before he could go.

He fell restlessly to sleep after some time, exhausted but feeling slightly assured.  And in the morning, when Victor woke again and again, each time he had to check if Yuuri was still there, his narrow frame tucked beneath Victor’s sheets.

It was terrifying and bewildering for Victor, being this anxious.  He didn’t know what brought on this feeling of _want_ .  He’d never met someone he was immediately scared of losing, of them walking out the door on him.  But Yuuri… Yuuri of all people.  Yuuri was a _traveler_ , for Christ’s sake.  He would walk out the door soon enough, because that was the sort of life he chose for himself.  Victor didn’t know how to ask him to stay, didn’t know how to reason with himself about it.  All Victor knew was that he’d been alone for so long, and maybe he didn’t want to be anymore.

The last time Victor went to check on Yuuri before he decided he was really getting up, and staying up, Yuuri had already been sitting up in Victor’s bed.  The collar of Victor’s shirt was loose on Yuuri, letting Victor glimpse sharp collarbones and smooth pale skin.  His hair was sticking up everywhere, eyes hazy and low-lidded.  There was something very acutely handsome about the way Yuuri looked right then, and when he turned his gaze on Victor—Victor was smiling without meaning to.

“Victor…” Yuuri said slowly, fingers grasping the bedsheets.  He blinked, squinted, looked around for a few long moments.  Confusion seeped into his features, slowly and then all at once.

“What am I—?”  His eyes widened, pitch spiking.  “How did I get here?”

 _I’m in Victor’s bed.  I’m in Victor’s bed.  I’m in Victor’s bed._   **_Why am I in Victor’s bed?_ **

But Victor was all smiles and giggles.  “Good morning, Yuuri.”  Victor looked like he’d just woken up too.  His hair wasn’t brushed, his clothes still the same as the night before.  There were dark smudges beneath his eyes, like he hadn’t slept very well at all.

“Where did you sleep?”  Yuuri asked worriedly, unappeased by Victor’s bright greeting.

Victor gestured vaguely over his shoulder, unconcerned.

“Victor!”  Yuuri shouted, hurrying to get out of the bed, away from the scene of the crime.  “I’m so sorry!  You shouldn’t have slept on the couch!  You probably didn’t sleep well at all, and I’m giving you so much trouble, I’m so sorr—”

Victor was shocked by the outburst, hurriedly went to Yuuri’s bedside and eased him back into a sitting position before he could try to sprint out the door.  “Yuuri!  Yuuri, calm down.  I thought you would be uncomfortable on the couch so I moved you—”

“What?!”  Yuuri seemed all the more scandalized.  “No!  The couch was fine!  This is your house, it’s your bed, you shouldn’t have gone to the trouble—”

Victor was getting just as worked up, eyes wide, appalled that Yuuri would see himself as a burden.  “You looked like you hadn’t slept in days, of course I wanted to make you more comfortable!”

It occurred to them, then, that they were both yelling over such a silly thing this early in the morning, and that Victor’s hands were splayed over Yuuri’s shoulders, holding him down while Yuuri grasped his wrists.  And while Yuuri was still slightly agitated if not totally bewildered by the idea that Victor had actually _carried him to his bed_ while he’d been sleeping, Victor started laughing.

The sound of Victor’s laugh was easily one of the best sounds Yuuri had ever heard.  It was a peculiar thing to notice, definitely, but he found himself entranced by it.  Soothed by it.  It was a light, jolly sound, like softly ringing bells or how it felt to look into the eyes of a smiling puppy.  The sort of unadulterated joy that made Yuuri feel weightless just to hear.

And then Victor took him by the hand and tugged him out of bed, murmuring softly, “Come on, let’s go have breakfast.  There’s something I want to show you when we’re done.”

There was a pleasant warmth in Yuuri’s chest where there had been nothing before, a space that Yuuri felt was just a little less empty than it had been yesterday.  He felt, for a moment, that he could feel the sound of Victor’s laughter filling some of the space, felt that Victor’s face in a firelit room, a contented smile on his lips, was there too.

Yuuri had been many places so far in his life, had seen many things, met many sorts of people.  But never before had anyone filled him and warmed him quite like Victor Nikiforov.

Yuuri didn’t know what to do with this information.

 

* * *

 

_Now…_

 

When Yuuri returned to Russia five years later—the fifth time in five years, to be exact—it was Yuri Plisetsky who caught him.

Yuuri had been walking through the streets of town, eyes down and head bowed, wearing a thick winter jacket and sturdy old boots.  His inky black hair was covered by his hood, glasses shielding his dark eyes.  No one should have recognized him if they knew him, and almost no one did.

But it was that particular day when he was walking down the street, that a hand grasped his arm and nearly threw him down the small alleyway between two buildings.  Yuuri braced himself, steadying himself on his feet, turning in the direction of his assaulter.  After generations of being around, Yuuri had a decent grasp on what to do if someone tried to rob him.

But facing him, there in the shadows of the alleyway, was a vaguely familiar face.

“Yo.”  The stranger said in a carefully laid back voice.  “It’s been awhile, Katsuki.”

Yuuri blinked at the young boy.  He had to be about fifteen at this point, blonde hair long around his face and eyes sharp and cold.  He had that same faintly scowling expression, even as he peered over Yuuri’s mostly covered face with a soft sort of caution.  Yuuri hadn’t shown his face back here since that first year, had been in Russia but never spotted by any of the orphans again.  He’d sent things in the mail, sometimes.  Pictures of faraway places, foreign trinkets and details.  Victor lived for those packages, poured over them desperately.  So much so that Yuri Plisetsky had found himself quietly concerned, never voicing the offness of Victor.  So much that when Victor got rough about it, sometimes, that Yuuri hadn’t come back in years, Yuri Plisetsky would try and talk him out of it, distract him with stupid games, _anything_.

“Yuri,” Yuuri Katsuki addressed him.

Yuri only stared at him long enough that Yuuri got the idea.  Yuuri pulled off his hood, and the Russian Yuri stared hard at him for a moment longer.  The blonde sighed heavily, looking away.

He shook his head.  “Come on.”

Yuuri didn’t insult him by refusing.  He pulled his hood back on, and they stepped out from the alleyway.  Walking down the street, Yuri stuffed his hands in his pockets and tried not to draw any eyes.

Yuri Plisetsky led him to a park, where they sat together on the old rusty swing set.  It was the thick of winter again in Russia, snow on the ground, their breath coming out in quiet fogs.  The two sat together silently, only the rattle of chains sounding out.

“Victor’s turning eighteen in a few days.”  Yuri said at last.  “What will you do?”

That’s right.  Yuuri hoped to outrun it, to be in town and go away again as fast as he could.  But here little Yuri was, fifteen now, making Yuuri face it.  Like he knew.

But Yuri went on, and the Japanese Yuuri caught that he might not be used to saying so much to anyone.  His words were rough, a little harsh, but he meant well.

“Once he turns eighteen, he can’t stay with us anymore.  You know that right?  The government stops paying his welfare, and Yakov can’t afford to support him.”  Yuri said, trying to sound flippant about this, but Yuuri could hear the quiet desperation beneath the surface.  “I don’t want him to go.  But there’s nothing here for him anymore.”

“There’s no work for him here?”  Yuuri asked, despite all Yuri’s pleading.

Yuri Plisetsky shot him a look.  “He’s wanted to be a traveler, just like you, since the day you left.”

Of course, Yuuri Katsuki thought. _Of course_.  In every lifetime, once Victor met Yuuri again, he would always stop thinking about a future here.  It would always be a future with Yuuri.  It was part of their curse, part of Yuuri’s punishment.  No matter how many lives Victor lived, he was resigned to find Yuuri and be with him.  A shackle that Yuuri felt weigh on him every time Victor looked at him, in every life.

Not because Yuuri didn’t love Victor, because he did.  He would love him again and again in every life, without fail, unwaveringly, just like the first time.  But Victor… Victor was released from their endless cycle every time he was born again, allowed for a few years to live without Yuuri, to be a normal kid without a god’s curse.  Yuuri longed for just one life, just one century, that Victor could go on and not find himself chained to Yuuri.  That maybe he could fall in love with someone else, and get a job and maybe he’d have kids and maybe he’d live a good life, without Yuuri’s eternal grief clouding them.  If he didn’t meet Yuuri, for just one lifetime, maybe he would find he didn’t need Yuuri.  Maybe he wouldn’t feel so hopelessly lost every time Yuuri had to go away from him again.

“Are you tired of him, Katsuki?”  Yuri asked, his voice rough and low.  There was so much care in that question, so much caution.  A question Yuuri had been asking himself for hundreds of years.

Yuuri’s reply was too quiet, too soft, too unbearable that Yuuri wished it would be swept up in the wind and never reach his own ears.  “No.”  He said.  “Never.  I’ll never be tired of him.  But—”

“But?” Yuri pressed.

“But he deserves better.  He deserves to live his temporary life with all its temporary joys and griefs and frustrations.”  Yuuri looked up into the endless sky, felt his own unending eternity reflecting back at him.  “I can’t offer him joy.  I can’t offer him a good, happy life.  I wish that he would find someone that could.”

Yuri regarded him.

A long silence swept over them, Yuuri’s words settling over their ears and in his chest.

Silence, and Yuri watched him.  Stared at him.  Waited.

“You’re in mourning.”  Yuri said.  Not a question.

Yuuri nodded.  “I have been for the longest time.”

Yuri Plisetsky nodded, then.  He kicked at the snow on the ground in front of him, shoving his hands back in his pockets.  His carefully arranged expression peered out into nowhere.  Looking at nothing.  Absorbing everything.

“Alright.”  Yuri said at last, nodding again.  “Then that’s fine.”

He nodded toward the entrance of the park.  “Let’s go, Katsuki.  You owe him a visit.”

 

* * *

 

When they approached the hulking building that was Yakov’s orphanage, Yuuri saw immediately how much nicer it looked in broad daylight.  The white house seemed less like all shadow and intimidation, more like a home.  More like the place that Victor and Yuri Plisetsky grew up, lived in throughout their childhoods.

Yuri P. approached the door first, slamming a closed fist against it.  “Oi!”  He shouted.

The door was flung open by an unfazed Mila.  She gazed down at Yuri with a vaguely disapproving gaze.  “You shouldn’t slam on the door like that or Yakov will—”  Her gaze caught on Yuuri Katsuki, who stood a few paces behind the Russian Yuri.

“Yeah,” Yuri Plisetsky huffed as he walked past her.  “That’s what I thought.”

Yuuri smiled politely.  “Hello.”  He couldn’t remember her name, but he remembered her vaguely from his visit a few years before.  That stark red hair was short and lovely, wavier now than it had been years ago.  She was much taller now, slim and beautiful.  Yuuri wondered vaguely if all of Yakov’s orphans were as lovely as models, going by how Yuri and Mila had grown thus far.

Mila cocked her head at the foreigner.  “Do I know you?”  She asked.

“Katsuki!”  Yuri called from inside the house.  “Get your ass in here!”

Mila’s eyes widened.  “Katsuki…?”

Yuuri Katsuki walked up the steps, nodding at her before he walked past.  Yuuri took in the staircase in front of him, remembering vividly how it had looked just a few years ago.  One of the steps had a new board of wood over it, like someone had shoved a foot through the step.  The railing was repainted.  The house, inside just as much as the outside, looked much more friendly in the light.

Yuri Plisetsky, who had already made his rounds around the first floor of the house, started up the steps before Yuuri.  He glanced back, to see Yuuri staring up after him.  There was a sort of strange newness that settled over Yuuri, sort of like coming to a new country for the first time.  Most countries had long since lost their newness to him, and some had changed entirely since he’d last come around, but Yakov’s orphanage in the daylight was like going somewhere for the very first time.  And Yuuri had not had very many “firsts” in a long, long time.

“Come on,” Yuri kept on up the stairs, and Japanese Yuuri followed behind.  

Up the stairs, around a corner.  A hallway of doors spread out beyond the two boys, and Yuuri could remember exactly which door was Victor’s.  He could remember the two beds, the windows and how the candle light played with the shadows.

Yuri stood before that exact door, the fifteen year old glancing once more at Yuuri Katsuki.  And then he slammed a fist against the door, his face remaining delicately closed off, but his voice was its usually harsh tone.

“Victor!  I brought you an early birthday gift!”  He called.

Yuuri almost smiled.  Almost.  But found that he was too nervous, all of a sudden, to manage.

The door opened, and there stood a curious-looking Victor.

Yuuri’s heart stopped in his chest, jumped into his throat.  That feeling of the earth shivering beneath his feet, the universe humming around him.  Yuuri had been around long enough that he could feel when certain important threads crossed paths, when important things were about to happen.  It was a very subtle shift, to anyone else.  Something most people go their entire lives without taking notice of.  But Yuuri felt it hum through his immortal bones, felt their ancient bond quiver between them.

If either Victor or Yuuri noticed when Yuri Plisetsky’s eyes widened slightly, feet shifting him backwards, neither of them let on.

Victor was much, _much_ taller than he’d been five years ago.  Eighteen in a few days.  Still a child, still unrefined in small ways that did not make him a man.  But he was so beautiful, Yuuri thought.  So lovely to behold, that ethereal silver hair and those icy blue eyes.  The closest thing to perfection Yuuri had ever known, and he wasn’t even at the prime of his life yet.

When Victor’s eyes caught on Yuuri, that bond was undeniable.  Unbearable.  Victor looked at Yuuri and it was just like the first time.  Always the first time for Victor.  The stutter of breath, eyes that widened, any and all traces of intelligible thought gone.

 _“Yuuri,”_ Victor gasped, and then launched himself at Yuuri.

Victor nearly toppled Yuuri over, his grip bone-crushing.  But Yuuri gripped him back, clenched closed fists into Victor’s shirt and tried to pull him closer.   _God,_ he’d missed Victor so much.  He always tried not to think about it, but he did.  He felt Victor’s absence every single day, every moment.

Victor slipped a hand to the back of Yuuri’s head, shoving down his hood and lacing long fingers through Yuuri’s inky black hair.  Craving closeness.  Craving contact.

All at once, Yuuri knew he wouldn’t be leaving him again.  Not for the rest of this lifetime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/winter-gods) for the official Winter Gods tumblr account for updates on chapter releases and such!


	5. Yuri Plisetsky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuri Plisetsky is a liar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so psyched for you guys to read this chapter. I hope things will start picking up even more from here, but let me know what you think of it in the comments please! Every comment is appreciated, believe me.
> 
> As always, click [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/winter-gods) for the official Winter Gods tumblr account for updates on chapter releases and such!

 

_Hundreds of years before …_

 

After breakfast, Yuri followed Victor outside.  They bundled themselves up, and Victor watched with some amusement as Yuuri layered himself generously.  But there was something in Victor’s face when he eyed Yuuri’s clothing, something too cold and too observant as he took in the worn fabric and the dirt smudges and grass stains.  

But they walked to the center of the field, to the formidable icy surface.  Yuuri didn’t know.  Not at the time.  He didn’t know what it was that Victor did to earn the blessing of the gods.  He hadn’t tried to guess, because all the time they’d spent together had gone by so quickly.  There hadn’t been a moment to ponder why hot food was always already on the stove for them, the water always hot, clothes always clean.  Yuuri didn’t know.

Victor walked until the edge of the ice, looked back at Yuuri.  He smiled a little hesitantly.  “Yuuri,” he said.  “Don’t take your eyes off me.”

Yuuri didn’t expect the steel in Victor’s voice, but there it was.  Another command.  

Yuuri kind of smiled.  He was starting to see through these commands.  All they were, really, were pleas disguised as demands.

“Of course,” he said.

It was all the confirmation Victor needed.

With sure steps, he walked out onto the ice.  Yuuri watched a little apprehensively from the sidelines, wondering what in the world Victor might plan to do.  He would slip all over the ice if he wasn’t careful.  Crack his skull open when he fell.  Yuuri crossed his arms over his chest, waiting.

There was a moment.  So subtle, so sudden that Yuuri almost didn’t catch it.  But one moment, Victor was walking quickly, picking up speed, and the next it was like he was flying.  Gliding with impossible grace over the solid surface, standing tall and light.  Like any moment now he would soar completely off the ground, separate from the earth and break into flight.

Sure feet carried him weightlessly across the ice surface.  The wind at his back, the air like a steady hand at his shoulder.

There was an expression that crossed Victor’s face, like peace.  Like purpose.  Like loneliness so great that it stained his soul.  Yuuri was awestruck by it, breathless just to lay eyes on him.

Yuuri was struck by the urge to follow him out there.  Onto the ice.  To reach out and touch him, to watch Victor’s eyes open and look at him, to tell him: _I’m here._

The blue sky and flawless snow reflected light in Victor’s silver hair, made his pale skin glow, made his dark clothing that much starker of a contrast.  Made everything about Victor scream godliness.

Yuuri had a thought then.  That if he stepped out there, onto the ice, he would become Victor’s shadow.  The dark to his light, the line that tied him down to earth when he seemed so close to floating upward and heavenbound.

He forgot the thought instantly, when Victor’s gracefully figure shot into the air and spiraled.  Suspended there, if only for a moment.  Elegance at its finest.  Beauty personified.  Yuuri felt, perhaps, that Victor was much too much of a god for a simple man like him to ground.

Victor landed on sure feet, continuing fluidly.  Coming full circle, that cloudy face lifting to peer at Yuuri on the sidelines.

There.

That moment.  Right then.

Yuuri felt that familiar tug.  A pull in his chest, vague and true, like the one that had led him here to this clearing.  Only this time, it pushed him onto the ice.  It told him, nudged him with insistent fingers: _Go._

Yuuri stepped out onto the ice.  The ice steady beneath him, solid.  He walked then, slow at first, toward Victor.  Victor, who had frozen in place, motionless on his golden skates.  His face so carefully blank, so fragile in its expressionlessness.

Yuuri walked slow, and then a little faster, that hand at his shoulder, another at his back.   _Go,_ it said.   _Run._ He did.  Yuuri was never one to ignore signs when they presented themselves to him.

Yuuri ran, and the world shifted oh so subtly.  Like the world had sighed open around him, opened its arms to him.  There were silver blades secured to his boots, gliding across the solid ice.

Amazed, absolutely struck with awe, Yuuri gasped.  He looked up, Victor’s name on his lips, just in case he’d missed the shift.  But the look on Victor’s face was more.   _More._ Not just more, it was _everything._

Victor’s blank expression shattered.

In between the falling pieces, Victor’s eyes shone with relief.  With awe, with joy, with impossibility and disbelief and hope and reverence.  There was so much, too much.  Yuuri didn’t know how to absorb it, remember it, memorize it all—but _god did he try._  He tried, and tried, and tried to make sense of how Victor wasn’t looking at his skates, wasn’t looking amazed at the very notion of them _appearing,_ or that he was like _Victor._ Victor was staring at _Yuuri_ , amazed and awestruck and all the rest at _Yuuri_ , like there was something particular about _him_ that was so worthy.  Something so enchanting and awe-inspiring and true.

 _“Yuuri,”_ Victor breathed, like a secret, like a prayer.  And when Yuuri finally reached him, slow and steady on his new skates, Victor wrapped him in his arms.  Held him tight as though he’d never let go.

And it was everything.

 _This_ was everything.

 

* * *

 

_Now…_

 

“Yuuri,” Victor gasped when he pulled away at last, though his hands still rested on the older man’s shoulders.  “Where’ve you been?”

Yuuri smiled, though a little sadly.  It was the second time today he’d heard that question when the question should have been: _what brings you back here?_ It wasn’t as though Yuuri had made any major, lasting impression on anyone here.  It should have been simple, really.  If Victor didn’t feel that bond so distinctly, so suffocatingly, then maybe the question would have been different.

“Here and there,” he said.  Then, a little warmer, “I’ve sent you letters and things, didn’t I?  You should know where I’ve been better than I do.”

“What?”  Scandalized, Victor’s fingers never let up on Yuuri’s shoulders.  Pressed harder, if anything.  Yuuri knew why, could feel the pinch in his chest.  The distance had made them desperate.  The bond gone too long unacknowledged, demanding to be made up for.  At that moment, all Yuuri wanted to do was hold Victor close, just know that he was there and alive and okay and with him.  “Yuuri, you’re so cruel.  It’s been too long since you came back.  You must have something to say for yourself.”

Victor was pouting.  It was bleeding into his voice, written in the press of his fingers.

 _Came back_ .  The words echoed around Yuuri’s empty chest, around inside the heart that had been reduced to rubble through centuries of love and loss and the vicious cycle repeated.   _Came back.  Came back.  Came back._

 _I always come back._  Yuuri thought.   _I always will._

“I’m a traveler, little one,” though Victor wasn’t any sort of little anymore, “If I keep walking, I’m going to end up in the same place at one time or another.  You just have to wait.”

Fair enough, Victor’s expression said.  Victor knew Yuuri was a traveler.  It had been explicitly clear to him from the very first moment.  And yet he had to repeat it to himself, over and over, because something inside of him couldn’t understand that Russia was not home for him.  That Yuuri didn’t have a home at all.

Or if he did have a home somewhere, he never said.

“Five years is much too long, though, isn’t it?”  Victor still pressed.  “Look how old and wrinkled I am now.”

Yuuri’s eyes sparkled with humor.  “Is that so?”  He asked.  “You look the same to me.”

“I’m crushed.”  Victor said, “Devastated.”  He said, “How will I go on?”

But Victor was grinning, those brilliant eyes so bright.  Yuuri never knew how he could stand beneath that gaze, how he could bare it to feel all that affection turned on him.  Victor changed a little with every passing lifetime, a little more different from the one before, but Yuuri could swear that the longer this vicious cycle wore on, the more love Victor held in his heart for Yuuri.  Whether he understood it or not, the well was there.  The love built up over centuries, the yearning accumulated from all the years they spent apart.

Yuuri felt the same, but at least he could recall every time Victor fell in love with him again.  At least he could remember how many times it had been that they found each other, only to lose Victor again in the end.  At least he understood.

But Victor didn’t know.

Yuuri wondered how much Victor drowned in that feeling of attachment, of affection, of need and want, to a man he met only once.  Yuuri wondered how lost he must feel, to bare the weight of emotions from all his past lives.  Yuuri felt lost in it, sometimes, but at least he had all his memories of them together.  At least it had been this one life only that he gave to Victor, and not a hundred over.

From beside them, Yurio let out an exaggerated sigh.  “Alright, morons, let’s take it downstairs and say hello to everyone.”

At that, Victor beamed.  He released Yuuri’s shoulders, grasping Yuuri’s upper arm instead, and didn’t let go.

 

* * *

 

“Yuuri Katsuki.”  Georgi said, sighing in good humor.  “A traveler from Japan.  Right.  Yes, we know, Victor.  You’ve only told us about five times now, and a million more since the last time Yuuri came around.”

The group of teenagers were loitering around the living room, Yuuri sat down on the couch with Victor joined at the hip.  Victor was pouting in that childish way of his, and Yuuri was smiling in that old way of his.

It was true.  Victor was near vibrating with excitement at Yuuri being there, meeting his family, just… being there.

Mila was smiling behind the hand over her lips, and Yuri Plisetsky was scoffing where he stood in the doorway between rooms.  And Georgi was leaned up against the wall, smiling.  It wasn’t hard to tell that the bunch of them were happy for Victor, glad to see him reunited with the Japanese foreigner that had saved him all those years ago, the object of his hero worship.

There was just… something odd about Yuuri Katsuki.  Something that no one really knew how to bring up, because their minds weren’t clear on what exactly happened all those years ago.  Because the foreigner in front of them, the one that Victor was holding onto, he was… _young._

But young wasn’t a good word to describe Yuuri Katsuki.  He seemed well weathered, and far more experienced than any of the people in the room.  He kind of reminded Georgi of Yakov, the type of age that wasn’t just physical but substantial.  You could feel it in Yuuri’s presence, rather than see it in his face.  Because Yuuri _was_ physically young.  Mid-twenties, they guessed.  Not a gray hair in sight, not a wrinkle or scar.  Just a boy.

More than just that contradiction though, things just _didn’t add up._ If either Georgi or Mila could remember correctly, five years ago, Yuuri looked just the same.  And had been traveling for some time at that point, according to Victor.  According to Victor, the traveler would be twenty nine now.  But Yuuri didn’t look it.  Didn’t look like he’d been traveling through hard winters and brutal summers all across the continent.  Yet there had been letters and souvenirs and photographs.  Cold hard proof of his travels, things that were undoubtedly authentic.

“So Yuuri,” Mila said, setting her hand away from her face, crossing her arms over her stomach.  Georgi knew by that tone that she was going to address what they’d all been thinking.  “You look awful good for a twenty-nine year old?”

Yuuri smiled at her, unfazed.  “Thank you,” he said.  “It’s in the genes, I think.  My parents had aged well, too, when I last saw them.”

It was easy to Yuuri, to play this game.  To lie through his teeth and cover what he was.

“How old did you say you were now?”  Georgi chimed in.

“Twenty-something, at this point.”  He joked, though he knew the date.  He had done a mental check of how old he would be now, according to what he’d said back then.  “It’s been years since I stopped counting birthdays.”

Really it had.  He could probably do the math according to the year, roughly.  But his birthday had dated back hundreds of years ago, now.  It was hard to tell what the exact year was that he’d stopped aging, hard to remember what year he’d called his birthday then.

“Yuuri~!”  Victor hummed.  “You’re twenty nine this year.”

Georgi sighed, because Victor’s brain had been reduced to mush upon seeing Yuuri today.  Otherwise he was sly, sarcastic, a little intimidating even.  But Yuuri being here, it was like he was twelve years old again, that flash of light on a dark night, happier than Georgi thought he had ever seen Victor.

“Well, whatever,” he dismissed that line of thinking.  “What are you in town for, Yuuri?”

That.  That, Yuuri should have been prepared for.  Yet, somehow, he wasn’t.

Everyone in the room perked their ears toward him, then.  Set on edge at his hesitance.  Interested, suspicious.  Yuuri knew what they wanted to hear, that he was back to collect Victor and take him with him wherever he was to go next.  Travelers, together.  That was what they wanted to hear.

But Yuuri would never lie about that.  Would never lie about his intentions with Victor, even if he couldn’t tell the whole truth.

“I have business in Russia,” he said shortly, simply.  “My destination is about a day and a half’s journey from here.  Honestly, I didn’t intend on coming back here until I’d finished up there.  But Yuri caught me, and—”

He smiled a little at Victor.  “I couldn’t say no.”

For a moment, Yuuri thought Victor was content not to question him on his business.  He seemed so elated that Yuuri had intended on coming back here, with or without Yuri Plisetsky’s guidance.  But Georgi knew better.

“What kind of business?”  Georgi pressed.  “If you don’t mind me asking.”

Yuri Plisetsky turned his face away from the room, then.  Mila leaned slightly closer, and Georgi seemed fixed on the answer.  Even Victor.  Victor who hung off of Yuuri’s every word.  Victor seemed a little off put.

Because there was an air of ominousness flooding the room, then. Like a cold wind, a draft, a cracked window that no one could find.  Yuuri could only tiptoe around the truth.  Give them pieces, give them fragments, but never the whole thing.  It wouldn’t help anything if they knew.  The truth would die with them in a few decades anyway.  As fleeting as mortality.

“A memorial.” Yuuri’s answer was a whisper in a silent room, a candle on a dark night, as solemn as a last prayer.  “I have to pay my respects to someone very dear to me.”

The silence was brutal.  Crushed the air from their lungs, led their gazes to the ground.  Yuri Plisetsky’s face remained turned away, his body still.  Mila and Georgi exchanged guilty glances, wishing they had known better than to ask and yet they understood that it needed to have been done.  And Victor.

Victor was the only one still looking at Yuuri.  His blue eyes were so bright, so agonized, so understanding.  As if to say, _Yes.  It all makes sense now._  The reason Yuuri seemed so perpetually sad.  The reason when he last came to Russia, he seemed too heavy, as he did to this day.  Loss.  Mourning.  The weight of mortality pressing close at his heels.

“Yuuri,” Victor said softly.

But Yuuri turned his smile on Victor, the smile that was as much a lie as it was necessary.  Those dark, pretty eyes rested on Victor’s pale face, on wide blue eyes, on an expression that spelled helplessness, that said, _how do I help you?  How do I ease your pain?_

Yuuri’s smile told him enough.   _You can’t,_ it said.

“So,” Yuuri said, letting the moment pass, the room clearing of its miserable fog.  That smile lifted the dark cloud above them, those eyes set Victor’s desperate mind at ease.  It was so easy, Victor thought, for Yuuri to settle him.  So easy for Yuuri to make things okay.  “Where is Yakov these days?  I should let him know I’m here.”

“Yakov?”  Mila repeated.  “I think he went to the store—”

“I’m here,” a voice rumbled from the hallway.

“Yakov,” Victor said from beside Yuuri, his expression shifting considerably.  There was something much more mature there now, than what had been there before.  Responsible, when reigned in by his parental figure.  “We didn’t hear you come in.”

His bulky frame appeared in the doorway beside Yuri Plisetsky.  Yuri stepped into the room to give Yakov more room to come in.  “Of course not,” he said.  “Because God forbid any of you enter the house without trying to break down the door.”

Yuri Plisetsky grumbled something sarcastic under his breath, but Yakov didn’t mind it.  He was looking instead at Yuuri Katsuki, seated on the couch beside Victor.

Yuuri Katsuki stood, then, and everyone turned to watch.  Even Victor, who stayed seated, watched the two older men carefully.

Yuuri met Yakov in the middle of the room, held out his hand.  Yakov took his hand and the two men shook.  A greeting among forces of nature.  “Mr. Katsuki,” Yakov said.

“Please,” he replied.  “Call me Yuuri.”

Victor would remember the sight for the rest of his life.  Two of the most important people in his life, meeting warmly in Victor’s childhood home.  Like old friends.  Both weathered and weary, aged and experienced.  Two very different people, and yet it seemed like they understood something that no one else in the room did.

Victor felt a clench in his heart, in his chest.  And he knew he was looking onto something important.  Something that would hold onto forever.  The man who had raised him and cared for him, and the man that Victor admired and wanted to go off with to see all the things that life could offer.  It was strange.  But it was powerful.

“Well that won’t do,” Mila murmured.  “There are two Yuri’s now.  How will we keep up?”

“Don’t start with me, hag.”  Yuri Plisetsky grumbled.

Victor chuckled, and the sound settled pleasantly in Yuuri's chest.

Yakov simply shook his head, releasing Yuuri’s hand only to clasp him on the shoulder.  “You’ll stay the night then?  Until you have to go.”

Yuuri found himself glancing backward, over his shoulder, to the silver-haired boy sitting on the couch.  The boy who was staring with an open face up at him, expression clear in its wanting.

Victor nodded at him, smiling.  So young, so eager.

“Of course he will,” Yuri Plisetsky spoke up, surprising everyone.  “He can take my bed, as long as he promises to stick around to say goodbye tomorrow morning.”

It wasn’t a dig.  There was no bite to Yuri’s words.  There was just a strange seriousness, a maturity that, perhaps, came with never really being a kid at all.

Yuuri paused at that.

Promises were fatal things, especially for an immortal.  

“I promise,” Yuuri told him, staring at Yuri Plisetsky across the room.  Cold blue-green eyes met dark brown ones.  An agreement that settled under Yuuri’s skin, sank into his blood, the fabric of his bones, the mettle of his soul.

 _(No,_ Yuuri realized.   _No._ _)_

Yuuri’s blood ran cold, then, as the truth set in.  His eyes widening just an unnoticeable fraction, breath catching in his throat, heart pausing in his chest, the air stilling by the impossibility of what just transpired.

No one else knew.  No one else could.

But Yuuri had just made a promise, and not to just anyone.  Not just any old promise, but the sort that bound him.  The type of sealing contract that stole life and limb, erased any and all that tried to break the sanctity of it.  

Yuuri had made a promise to a god.  Yuuri had gambled with gods before, and swore never again.  But here he was, faced with the vicious cycle again and again.  A fate of mortality, of gods and promises and eternity.  

Yuri Plisetsky was a god.  And a young one, at that.

 


	6. Suspicions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What did the gods do to Yuuri back then? What do they want with him now?

 

Okay.  Okay.  Calm down.  Relax.  It’s alright.  Everything is fine.

These are the things that Yuuri Katsuki told himself when Yuri Plisetsky revealed his hand.  Yuuri had made the critical mistake of making a promise to a god.  But, put in perspective, the promise could only prove fatal if he intended on breaking it.

He was safe.  Safe.  As long as he stayed to the morning, which he’d intended on doing anyway.  

 _Safe,_ he repeated to himself.   _Safe, safe, safe._

Gods, to Yuuri, were the things that went bump in the night.  The monsters under his bed.  The skeletons that lurked in his closet.

_Safe.  Safe.  Safe._

Yet Yuuri had dealt with gods before, so many centuries before, and they had ruined him.  Destroyed him.  Ripped mortality from his limbs, tore his lover from his arms, made him watch as the life bled from those beautiful blue eyes.

The thing about mortality, Yuuri realized sometime after everything he knew and loved had withered away to dust in the wind, is simply this:  When you are broken, when you are completely, totally ruined and ripped to shreds, you can rest easy knowing that it would end someday.  Life would make a slow crawl to a halt, but halt it inevitably would.

But Yuuri had lost that privilege.  Lost it to winter gods who claimed favorites, who stole and pillaged and slaughtered when they were bored, who loved poisonously, obsessively, consuming the object of their obsessions until there was nothing left of them to be devoured.

Yuuri still felt their burning caresses across his skin, some nights.  Still felt the sear of their heat, the intensity of their rage and possessiveness and jealousy.  He still felt their eyes on his back, their hands on his flesh, pulling, pulling, pulling— taking, having.

“Yuuri?”  That voice.  The voice that they took from him, stole away from him.  He remembered that day, the dark, tumultuous sky.  He remembered screaming, and shouting, and the cry of his lover.  It was like the sun had been shot down from the sky that day, and each of the skaters turned to watch with hopeless eyes as it fell.  Each of them watched, and knew things would never be the same.

The sun never came up for Yuuri again.

“Yuuri!”  Victor.   _Victor._ He’s here.  Not the Victor Yuuri knew, not the one he’d loved the first time, but it was still Victor.  Just a different life, a different age, a different boy in some small way that made him almost someone else entirely.  But still Yuuri loved him, loved him for the face of the man he’d lost, loved him for the heart of gold that remained the same throughout every life, for the undying love he had there, woven into the fabric of his soul, just for Yuuri.  So he was still Victor.  Victor and not.  But Victor, the first one, the real one, was there, still.  That soul was still the same.

A hand touched his cheek, right along the ridge of his cheekbone, and he knew by the touch.  Knew the feel of those long, cool fingertips; how tentative they were.  Yuuri blinked at that touch, kept from flinching by Yakov’s sturdy hand on his shoulder.  Yuuri looked at Victor, then, and felt Victor’s finger slip over his cheek, smearing something warm and wet there.

Yuuri was crying, he realized.  The tears had slipped from his eyes and tumbled down his cheek without him even realizing, and everyone in the room was wordless at the sight.

Yuri Plisetsky stared with wide eyes from where he stood, face pale. He slipped from the room without another word, no one noticing as he went.

“Yuuri, are you alright?”  Victor’s fingers soothed over his skin, his other hand coming to rest against Yuuri’s other cheek.  His voice was so gentle, so worried.  And Yuuri’s frantic heart lulled at those soothing touches, that lovely voice.  His body reacting to the great love of his life like nothing had ever changed for them.

Yuuri Katsuki smiled then, bringing one hand to rest over Victor’s, and the other to push away his tears.  Those bright eyes flicked up to meet Victor’s gaze. “I’m fine,” he insisted.  “Really, I’m fine. Just…my mind playing tricks on me.”

“Okay,” Victor whispered, and very lightly, Yakov removed his hand from Yuuri’s shoulder.  “Okay,” Victor repeated.  “It’s okay.”

“I’m going to start dinner,” Yakov said from the doorway, already moving to leave the room.  “Victor, help bring Yuuri’s things upstairs to your room.”

Georgi and Mila filed out after him, mumbling excuses about places they had to be.  But Yuuri and Victor stayed there, standing in the middle of the empty living room, staring into each other’s eyes.

Yuuri’s eyes were so bright, so soft, so lovely.  Victor wanted to drown in them, touch the honey gold and earthen brown that lied there.  The desire burned him from within, made him ache in a way he’d never felt before.  Not for anything explicit, not for anything someone might assume from a seventeen year old boy.  Simply, the desire for _more_ .  Like a restlessness in his heart, his bones, his _soul_.  To hold onto Yuuri, to pour into those beautiful eyes, to be as close to him as he could and never let go.

Yuuri could see it in the flicker of Victor’s eyes that he was at the cliff’s edge.  Wanting for more than he could understand, too young maybe to interpret a centuries old yearning for what it really was.

So Yuuri shut his eyes, held Victor’s hands and leaned into the touch.  And there they stayed, waiting, wanting.  The sunlight fading quickly from the skies beyond the windows, the cold night rushing to greet them.

In time Yuuri would tell him everything, but tonight he would let Victor enjoy his youth, his carelessness, the warmth of love in all its naivety.  No, Yuuri would not tell him the truth until Yuuri could no longer hide his inability to age, until Victor became sick of all Yuuri’s cloudy half-truths.  And then for Victor too, the sun would cease to rise.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Hundreds of years before…_

 

When the Russian and Japanese men tumbled back inside the small cottage, mouths aching from their smiles and their laughter, breathless from their joy, dinner was already on the stove and the fireplace crackled with spontaneous embers and candles had been lit up around the living room for light.

Throughout the rest of their time on the ice, Victor had never left his side again.  He would pull excitedly on Yuuri’s hand, cooing to the dark haired boy about how well he was doing on the ice.  Yuuri was not a natural like Victor had been, because Yuuri would stumble and he didn’t risk going too fast or he worried he would go sprawling.  Despite his worrying, his skates carried him steadily and the invisible urging hand had eased into a careful, guiding touch.

Yuuri wondered if this was what Victor felt.  If the approval of the gods felt like a steady hand, felt like a gentle voice murmuring at his ear.  He wondered if Victor still felt their heavenly presence as keenly as Yuuri did right then.

Victor threw himself down onto the couch when they stumbled inside, sighing happily.  “That was so much fun, Yuuri,” he smiled up at the Japanese man, and Yuuri couldn’t help but smile back.

Yuuri ran a hand through his hair, absently wondering when the last time he cut it was, feeling the wetness of sweat on his dark strands.  Victor traced his movements with his eyes, followed Yuuri’s fingers where they raked through his mop of hair.  Victor still smiled, although there was something quieter about it now.  Like he was content to sit and watch Yuuri comb fingers through his hair, content just to sit there in that moment and enjoy Yuuri’s presence.

It had been so long since Victor had seen another person, and he was so, so grateful that it had been Yuuri who had found him yesterday.  Grateful for all of Yuuri’s time.  Grateful to the gods, because this had to be another one of their gifts.  Had to be another one of their blessings, this lovely man who had received the gift of ice skates just the same as Victor had.

“Would you like to shower first, Yuuri?”  Victor asked him, breaking the comfortable silence.

Yuuri’s hand slid to the back of his neck, shook his head.  “You did a lot more work than I did today.  You should go first.”

Victor considered protesting, but he decided against it.  The comfortable look on Yuuri’s face was something Victor didn’t want to disturb with a useless little argument right then.

So Victor stood, and left for his room, squeezing Yuuri’s shoulder as he went.

When Victor had showered, and Yuuri showered after him, the two sat down for dinner in the living room.  Yuuri sat on the corner of the couch, and Victor in the chair directly beside him.  And the two talked between bites of food from their dishes, choking on giggles, shameless with their cackles.  Yuuri told him in excited, broken Russian about his life, about how he had loved to dance as a kid and how his parents adored him and how his sister coddled him and how he had a little dog when he was younger that was his best friend for years.  He told Victor about the time he broke a dinner plate and didn’t know what to do, so he sat there among the pieces and cried his eyes out and his little puppy used to howl and whimper in sympathy right there beside him.

And then Victor told him in quiet, hushed words about how his parents died when he was young, about his life in the orphanage, about brutal winters and too little food.  He told Yuuri about stealing in the market places, how sometimes he was swift enough to not be seen, or how sometimes he wasn’t fast enough and harsh, meaty hands would grab him and bruise him and beat him.  Victor told him about a dog that wasn’t quite his, didn’t quite belong to the orphanage, but it showed up every so often and loved to play with all the little girls and boys.  They named him Makkachin, and Victor loved him so much.  Makkachin came around until Victor was about eighteen, and then one day Victor wandered out and away from the orphanage, some distance into the thick woods, and there he found Makkachin.  The fluffy, loving dog lying motionless in the snow, skin so tight over its ribs, half of his chin and some of its stomach already devoured by maggots and other insects.

“I’ve been alone for years,” Victor told him, staring down at the table between them like the memories were written there, like they reflected all his lonely days in solitude.

But then Victor’s mouth pulled into a smile that he didn’t mean, that Yuuri could see right through.  His eyes screamed agony, but his words were filled with his attempt at happiness, gratefulness.  “But I don’t mind it, really.  There’s always food here, and hot water, and clean clothes.  It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been really comfortable.”

“But,” Yuuri was so, so quiet.  Earnest.  Honest.  Beautiful in the candlelight.  “Aren’t you lonely?  It must get painful, sometimes.”

Victor’s head dipped, just once.  The only answer he would allow himself.  The only acknowledgement of his pain that he could stand.

Yuuri didn’t mind being alone.  He never had.  But meeting Victor, getting to know the silver-haired man, there were some people that loneliness was not kind to.  Victor was one of them.  The sort who thrived on community, who loved attention and sharing space with others and talking and socializing.  Yuuri had never had the best people skills, but… he liked this.  Being here with Victor, where he always felt strangely at home, where talking to Victor felt so easy.  Here, where the ice that had built up in his chest from all his years of harsh travel had started to melt.

“When did you leave home, Yuuri?”  Victor asked, after some time, a strange and quiet curiosity to his tone.

“When I was seventeen,” Yuuri told him.

Victor’s gaze slid over him.  “How old are you now?”

“Twenty three.”

Victor’s eyes widened, turning to completely face Yuuri now.  “Six years?”  He sounded shocked.

Yuuri nodded, his smile a little grim.  Victor watched the candlelight chase the shadows across Yuuri’s face, watched six years of strain and struggle touch down on Yuuri’s face.  And Victor’s eyes pricked, at the notion that Yuuri has been wandering for so, so long.  That Yuuri has been so many places, and soon he would see many more.  Because Yuuri would have to leave, of course he would.

Yuuri was a traveler.  A wanderer.  The gods may have offered him Victor’s company, but they were not Yuuri’s gods.  This was not Yuuri’s land.  Yuuri wouldn’t want to stay stranded here with someone like Victor.

But.

Victor had been alone for years, too.  He hated it.  Hated the endless silence, the cold of isolation, hated getting up every morning and falling asleep every night because there was no longer anything to look forward to.

Yuuri had been there, this morning, and Victor had been warmed and inspired and excited to start a new day.  Because of Yuuri.  Because Yuuri was wonderful and charming and lovely and his smile was like coming home, his eyes like warmth, his words soft and clumsy in Russian but in the past day alone there were already improvements. Because Yuuri made this empty house feel like home, and Victor had never really felt that.

“Yuuri,” Victor said, and everything about him had shifted.  

Victor snapped, all at once.  Lunging forward, hands grasping Yuuri’s face, long fingers clasped Yuuri’s cheeks, sharp blue eyes searching desperately for something.  Anything.

His voice was frantic, pleading.  All of his composure lost.  “Yuuri, _where are you going?_  What are you _searching_ for?”

Victor’s fingers threaded through Yuuri’s hair, as if to hold onto him, as if to hold him together before he could scatter in the wind.  Those blue eyes were bright and wide and afraid, and they searched Yuuri for everything, anything.  “Yuuri,” Victor breathed.  “Why do you wander?”

It was so subtle.  So small, the change in Yuuri.  One moment Yuuri’s face had been blank with shock, watching and absorbing and remembering with wide eyes.  And then his shaking hands had lifted to cover Victor’s, to gently grasp his searching fingers.

Yuuri’s voice was so quiet.  So hushed in the infinite silence.  They were a caress over Victor’s heart, so gentle, so careful.

“I don’t know,” Yuuri said, and his voice shook as he said it.  His dark eyes lifted to meet Victor’s, glassy and empty and full and desperate and so, so much more.

The moment was charged.  The tension rattled through the air, sparked against their skin, burned their flesh and fell deafeningly on their ears.  And all the loneliness of the world poured from their hearts.  All the yearning, all the impossibility of it all spilled out too.

“I don’t know,” Yuuri repeated, and Victor made a devastating noise low in the back of his throat.  But Yuuri swallowed, gripped Victor’s hands tighter before they could pull away.  Held onto Victor, because he’d decided.  Because the pull in his chest reached through the cage of his ribs, reached with steady fingers.  Toward the space between them.  Toward Victor.  

Softly.  So softly, Yuuri whispered, “But I think this is it.”

It was.  Had to be.  Must’ve been.  The voice at his ear, the hand pressed outward from his ribcage, all of it told him very simply, _Stay.  At long last, stay._

The fire in the hearth puttered out and died, all the candles flickering out after it.  Darkness rushed in, and all Yuuri felt was Victor’s hands on either side of his head, threaded through his hair, his own fingertips somewhere between them.  The silence was thick, and loud, and infinite.  All Yuuri could hear was their breathing, shallow from the aftermath of their questions and confessions.

“Yuuri?”  Victor’s voice was a fragile, gentle thing.  “Will you stay?”

“If you’ll have me,” Yuuri whispered.

There was a light pressure on Yuuri’s forehead, then.  A touch of warm skin on his flesh, and Yuuri’s breath stuttered and his eyes fluttered shut at the touch.

“Stay,” Victor whispered, his lips pressed delicately to Yuuri’s forehead.  “Stay with me.  Stay for as long as you can bare it.  Stay for as long as you can stand me.”

Yuuri’s cheeks burned at the contact, heart beating too hard, too fast, too much.  But still, he couldn’t help but laugh a little.  “Well, if you put it like that…”  Yuuri bit down on his grin, his smile like love and springtime and flowers blooming.  "Yes," he said.  "I'd love to."

And when the fire and candlelights all roared to life again, the world had that certain quality to it again.  The same feeling Yuuri got when the skates had appeared on his shoes, like the very fabric of the universe was shifting, being adjusted, reworked, adapted.  Like the world was yawning open at the command of something otherly, bending to the will of the highest authority.

When Yuuri opened his eyes, he knew something had changed.  Something was different.

The two men slowly moved away from each other, their closeness forgotten to the strangeness that had overwhelmed them.  Victor stood, pulling Yuuri up onto his feet with him.

There was a curious look to Victor’s face as he glanced back at Yuuri.  Like he suspected what had happened.

The room around them looked the same, except… a little bigger?  Yuuri thought perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him.  But Victor eyed the room in the same marveling way, and quickly left the room.

“Victor?”  Yuuri called a little quietly, as if speaking too loud would break the spell.

Yuuri followed after Victor, into the kitchen, where Victor was throwing cabinets open and rummaging through drawers.  Each time he threw them open his face got a little brighter, eyes shining a little lighter, an excited smile forming on his lips.

“Victor, what’s going on?”  Yuuri asked, but Victor only shook his head, quickly moving onto the hallway, towards Victor’s bedroom.

Yuuri followed along, lost and confused, but Victor seemed to get it, whatever was going on.

Yuuri found Victor standing in the middle of the hallway, completely still.  His back was to Yuuri, but he looked as though he was holding his breath.  In front of him, Yuuri saw as he moved closer, were two doors.  Two doors where there had only been one.

The door at the very end of the hall was Victor’s.  That’s where it had been before, the only door in the hallway.  But now… immediately to the right of Victor’s door was another.  A door identical to Victor’s.

With a sudden start, Victor started toward the new door.  He pushed the handle down, and the door in, and they watched with no small amount of wonder as the door swung open, revealing a room near identical to Victor’s.  With some small differences.

Victor’s walls had been a pretty, delicate light gray, like snowy skies.  Yuuri’s walls were a lovely bright blue, a little familiar of a shade, like a certain Russian man’s eyes.  And while Yuuri’s walls were mostly empty of decoration, there was… there was a map.

The map was large and took up a large chunk of one wall, and on it was the vast expanse of the Eurasian continent.  Well, a good portion of it, anyway.  But Yuuri recognized it.  Knew it so well that he was left breathless by the truth of it.  Not just that it was a map, but that every place he had ever been was marked there.  In inky black lines and red circles and pretty stars, it looked as though Yuuri himself had been marking and tracking where he’d been through his travels.  All the cities and towns he’d ever been, all the trails he’d wandered.  The map looked like a web, from all the places he’d been, all the ways he’d been there, all the expanses he’d trailed across.

Yuuri’s fingers brushed delicately over the map, over the markings, and he felt disarmed by his awe.

Someone had been watching him.  He’d always had that feeling, since that Russian traveler had ended up at his parent’s onsen.  But now it was written on a map, the scrutiny of gods.

But Victor was more interested in other things.  Currently he was snooping through the drawers in Yuuri’s room, smiling in that strange, happy and excited and content way of his.  Like seeing Yuuri’s clothes cleaned and put away in drawers gave him some indescribable satisfaction.

Because for Victor, seeing Yuuri moved in meant permanence.  It meant Yuuri would stay.

“Victor,” Yuuri called softly.  And Victor knew, felt it, sensed it right away that something was off.  There was a solemn sort of shade to Yuuri’s eyes when Victor looked up to face him.

“Yuuri?”  Victor responded.

“Do you think,” Yuuri asked, with an air of suspicion and vague sense of ominousness, “the gods are planning something?”

Standing in Yuuri’s new room, staring at the map on the wall and the visible tracking of Yuuri’s life before now, everything leading up to this moment.  Yuuri was sure it meant something.  It had to mean something.  The gods wouldn’t take such pains for just anyone.

For a moment, Yuuri watched Victor’s eyes grow wide and dark, the pieces of a much bigger picture coming together.  But in the next moment, Victor blinked and it was like he had shoved all those thoughts away.  Comfortable to live in darkness, to be blind to whatever plot they were apart of.  He’d lived this way for so long, in this perpetual dream.  He didn’t want to start questioning it now.

“What a silly thing to think, Yuuri,” he said with a smile that came easily, as he remembered what the gods had just blessed him with.  He had Yuuri now.  The dream had only just gotten better.  There was no reason to doubt their kindness.  “Gods play favorites sometimes.  That’s nothing to be suspicious of.  We should be honored.”

It sounded rehearsed to Yuuri.  But he remembered Victor’s tale of hardship and travesty, and decided that Victor deserved his blissful ignorance.  He deserved to live well, and live easy, and Yuuri had no right to trouble him with his own suspicious thoughts.

“Alright,” Yuuri conceded.

Victor’s face broke out into a blinding smile.  “Now,” he said excitedly, “tell me about all these places you’ve been, Yuuri.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think of the chapter in the comments! Any predictions? I love reading what you guys are anticipating. And every comment is appreciated, believe me.
> 
> As always, click [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/winter-gods) for the official Winter Gods tumblr account for updates on chapter releases and such!


	7. Yuuko

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What is Yuuko planning? Then and now?

 

_Now . . ._

 

The last time Yuuri had experienced a family dinner had been centuries ago, so many hundreds of years before now, when his family still walked the earth.  He couldn’t remember them well, not after all this time.  Couldn’t quite remember the shade of his mother’s eyes, or the sound of his father’s laughter, or the bite of his sister’s wit, or the feel of Vicchan’s fur beneath his fingertips.  Because their memories had begun eroding for him even before he became an Immortal.  Before the curse was laid upon him that would force him to walk the earth for all eternity.

But sitting with Victor, with his family of the century, reminded him a lot of home.  He could feel it, sitting there.  Heard the echo of his sister’s crude laugh, his mother’s quiet giggle, his father’s proud smile.  There must’ve been something truly different about this lifetime, about this cycle, that Yuuri was starting to remember his family from way back when.

Georgi was animatedly talking about a girl named Anya, and Mila was playing footsies with Yuri Plisetsky under the table, and Victor was talking with Yakov about someone he bumped into at the supermarket.  And Yuuri was there, among the family, and he felt warm.  Not just physical warmth, but a deep seated sense of temporary completion.  Something, he thought with a distant sort of shock, that he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

“Oi, baba,” Yuri Plisetsky snapped.  “Let me eat in peace.”

“Not until you split your rice with me!” Mila protested.

“No way in hell!  First come, first serve.”  He shoved his plate out of her reach, scooting his chair over with it.

Meanwhile, Georgi had pinned Yuuri with a sad look.  “She hasn’t called me back in two days!  Do you think she’s still angry with me?  I mean, if you were in my position, you would’ve done the same, right?”

“Um…” Yuuri started uncertainly.

“Georgi!” Mila snapped.  “Stop harassing the poor girl and give her time.  And leave Yuuri alone about it!”

“But I love her!”  He lamented dramatically.

“Yuuri doesn’t care!”  She argued.  Yuuri nearly opened his mouth to say otherwise, not wanting to hurt his feelings, but Georgi didn’t seem the least offended by it.

Yuuri wanted to giggle at the madness in the room.  And then wanted to laugh at the preposterousness of the idea.  A centuries old Immortal, giggling.  It seemed like a wild notion.

“Yuuri,” Yakov called from the head of the table.  “Are you familiar with a man named Christophe Giacometti?”

Yuuri blinked at the name, and Victor watched his face with unrestrained curiosity.

“Yes,” he said.  “I am.”

“Really?”  Victor asked.  “How?”

Yuuri blinked again, this time at Victor.  “He was an old colleague of mine.  He passed away years ago.”

It occurred to more than one person at the table that Yuuri Katsuki had a lot of dead friends.

Yakov sat back slowly in his chair, a surprised look passing over his face.  “Well,” he said, “I suppose he must’ve had a son then.  Named him after himself.”

Yuuri blinked again.  “Yes,” he said blankly.  “I suppose he did.”

“Well,” Victor said, oblivious.  “The Christophe that I know, knows of you.”

“Wait,” Yuri Plisetsky said, causing all eyes to shift to him.  “Christophe?  The swiss exchange student we had last september?”

Victor hummed agreement.  “That’s the one.”

Exchange student?

“He took an instant liking to Vitya,” Yakov told Yuuri.  “He still writes sometimes.  In fact, we received a letter not too long ago from him.  Says he’s coming to visit for a few days after Victor’s birthday.”

“You must be over the moon, Victor,” Georgi said.  “Two old friends coming to visit at the same time.”

“It’ll be interesting,” Victor said shortly.  And that was that.  Conversations separated from there, leaving Mila to break off to talk with Georgi, and Yakov to pull Victor back into whatever conversation they’d already been having.  And Yuri Plisetsky… well he looked at Yuuri Katsuki for a long moment, and there was no malice in that gaze.

“Katsuki,” Yuri Plisetsky said quietly, enough so that only Yuuri heard him.  “You and I need to talk.”

Yuuri nodded at that.  Even though it twisted his gut, made him unfathomably anxious, he knew that he was right.

Yuri Plisetsky stood, then, and everyone looked up.  “I’m going for a walk,” he said, “and Yuuri’s coming with me.”

Victor glanced at Yuuri, eyed his expression like he half expected there to be tears there again.  But whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it.  Yuuri stood too, and at Yakov’s nod the two young men walked from the room and neither of them dared look back.

 

* * *

 

Yuri Plisetsky walked several paces in front of Yuuri Katsuki.  The young god walked with a slight strut, a confidence that Yuuri had never felt in all his existence.  Even as they walked nowhere and anywhere, into the woods and beyond the eyes of civilization, he still displayed that confidence.  As though he weren’t even aware he was doing it.  As though it was hardwired into who he was, and he gave no thought to the opinion of anyone else.

But as they walked on, deeper and deeper into the quiet woods and the snowy underbrush, Yuri Plisetsky slowed his determined steps and he walked, even, with a little bit of hesitance.  A little more care.

Until they came to a small stream, nearly buried beneath the snow.  When Yuri P. stopped in his tracks, peering over the tunneled indent in the earth.

“Yuuri Katsuki,” he said softly, nearly a whisper, as though someone out there might hear him.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “About that.  What happened back there.”

Yuuri said nothing, still standing a few paces behind the blonde boy.  Hesitant.  Careful.  He knew better, knew well.  Knew that gods lie and they cheat and they steal.  Knew that they were to be handled with great care, great caution.

“I didn’t know.”  He said, as he turned and glanced back at Yuuri.  Those startling blue-green eyes were cold, and sad, and… understanding.  And for a god, that was almost unheard of.  Almost.  “Yuuko told me a little about what happened to you.  But I—”

The young god glanced past Yuuri, as though through the trees and snow, as though he were back in the living room and Yuuri’s face was still marked by trails of tears.  “I didn’t know it was that bad, Yuuri.  I’m sorry.”  He repeated.

“You know Yuuko?”  Yuuri questioned, a little conflicted.  Yuri P. seemed genuine in his apology, and he said he knew Yuuko… but how?

Yuri P. looked at him again, warming a little.  “Of course,” he said.  “She’s—she’s the closest thing I have to a mother.”

Yuuko.  Yuuko was the only benevolent god Yuuri had ever known.  She chose Yuuri, once upon a time, before the balance of the old world had been thrown.  Her godliness stemmed from grace, from peace, from the most selfless of loves.  She was the only god that Yuuri really believed in, really had faith in, really loved.

Yuuko. The last of the old gods.

“I never met them.”  Yuri Plisetsky started again, abrupt with an edge of desperation.  Like he was desperate to be understood, to make Yuuri see what he was, who he was, and not just all that being a god had entailed, once.  “The old gods, I mean.  But Yuuko says I’m not like them.  I think she sent me here to make sure of that.  To show me how cruel the old gods were, how I should be better.”

“How—” Yuuri started hesitantly.  “How old are you, Yuri?”

There was a smile so bittersweet on Yuri Plisetsky’s lips, for a moment he was more god than boy, less youth than eternity.  “Sixteen,” Yuri said simply.

 _Sixteen._ “Then—”

Yuri P. nodded.  “Yeah,” he said.  “I’m a young god.”

Yuuri Katsuki went silent at that.

“Does this feel weird to you, Yuuri?  I think it should.”  Yuri Plisetsky said, turning back toward the stream.  “You’ve probably sensed something’s different about this cycle, haven’t you?  I think Yuuko’s planning something.”

Of course he did.  Of course he felt it.  He’d felt it the very first day he’d met Victor this time around.  And now the pieces were pulling vaguely together, a bigger picture that was too indistinct yet to be understood.

Christophe Giacometti, one of the original ice skaters, his name being thrown around at dinner.  His connection to Victor.  A new god.  Things were changing.  Something was going on that Yuuri didn’t know what to expect.

“Why, though?  Why now?”  Yuuri asked.  

Yuri P. only shrugged, back still facing Yuuri Katsuki.  “All I know was that I was put here to observe Victor.”  He glanced over his shoulder.  “I didn’t know about you until you came here, you know.  I didn’t even really know I was a god until around the time Victor brought you home.  You… you feel like me, a little bit.  If that makes any sense.  Like you’re on the same astral plane as I am.”

It did make sense.  In a way that Yuuri didn’t know much about, he was less human than god at this point.  His lifespan fed off of Yuuko’s existence.  They were codependent on each other.  As long as he lived and believed in her, and came back to Russia every year on Christmas Day to skate for her, his life would continue to go on.  As long as his life went on, and he believed in her, and skated for her, then she would also go on.  There was no one else in the world who believed in the old gods.  No one but Yuuri now.  He kept her alive, in that way.

“I think I’m here to understand what happened all those centuries ago.  After all, it’s one thing to hear it.  Another to see the aftermath in all it’s ruined glory.”  Yuuri nodded to himself at that.  “It’s supposed to make me a better god.  But like I said.  I think Yuuko has her own reasons for it.”

Yuri Plisetsky turned around, at last, walking toward Yuuri Katsuki.  He put his hand on Yuuri’s shoulder.  “That memorial you were talking about,” he said.  “You mean Victor right?  You’re going to pay your respects to the first Victor.”

Yuuri Katsuki nodded slightly.  Nothing grieved him more, nothing had grieved him longer than the loss of Victor.  The real one.  The first one.  Every one after him had been a copy, a replication, a fabrication.  Real.  Yes, they were real.  But it was like reading your favorite book for the second, third, fourth, hundredth time.  Never the same, never as intense and authentic and perfect as that first time reading it.

“Well,” he said.  “Tell Yuuko I said hello, when you see her.” Then, “Also, don’t forget to ask her what the fuck is going on.”

And with that, Yuri Plisetsky let go of his shoulder and began the long walk back.

Yuuri couldn’t shake the sense of an oncoming storm, something coming, something that would, perhaps, devastate everything he’d come to know.  But still, he followed Yuri back.  Chose to believe that if Yuuko was intending on ending this, ending all of this vicious cycle once and for all, then she would do it kindly.  She would do it without spilling Victor’s blood, without making Yuuri watch gods tear the great love of his life from him again.

 

* * *

 

_Hundreds of years ago. . ._

 

Yuuri met a winter god on his third day there in the cottage by the frozen lake.  They’d ventured outside that morning, dressed warmly and feeling well rested.  The two had stayed up late the night before talking about Yuuri’s past travels, about the people he’d met and the places he’d seen.  Victor had been awestruck the whole night through, expressive and bubbly in a way that he hadn’t allowed himself to be before.  Unrestrained.  And they’d fallen asleep like that.  The two men in Yuuri’s bed, lying on top of the covers, as though they’d fallen asleep talking.

But they’d walked outside, and a sudden look passed over Victor’s face.  “I think I forgot something,” he briefly mumbled to Yuuri before walking back to the small cottage.

Unbothered, Yuuri continued his patient trek toward the icy lake.  For once, the cold felt oddly refreshing.  While his entire journey through the perpetual winterland of Russia had been harsh and brutal, this space was different.  The untouched snow and the solid glass of the lake’s surface, you’d look out over it and think the air was frozen.  But it breathed in a quiet lull, a gentle hum that liked to push at Yuuri’s back as he skated, and supported his feet as he glided.  The air here whispered that this was it, this was home.  This was where he had been made to wander, where he was made to stay.

“Yuuri,” a gentle voice murmured from behind him.  Not Victor.

Every instinct in his body lit up with kerosene, screamed, _not human.  Not right.  Not Victor.  Run.  Run, run, run._

But that voice.  A soft feminine voice, smooth and kind, he felt a vague sense of recognition toward that voice.  As if it bore some incredible likeness to the voice that sometimes pushed him in certain directions, out of danger, towards the threshold of this vast icy field.

Yuuri turned, and found a woman standing behind him.

She had a lovely face.  Glittering eyes and warm brown hair, a gentle smile as motherly and kind as he'd ever seen.  Nimble bodied and tall, elegant in the way her hair twined into a flawless updo.  The embodiment of grace.

A god.  

She held her hands up in a gesture of peace, the flutter of those pale, perfect fingers resembling a snowflake on the breeze.  That smile was so fond.  “It's good to finally meet you, Yuuri Katsuki.”

“How…?”  He was utterly bewildered, incapable of speech.  But that wasn’t uncommon for mortals in the presence of gods.

She just smiled.  “You’re my little dove,” she said.  “My champion.”

She was ethereal.  The most angelic being Yuuri had ever laid eyes on.  Wise and mature beyond the fabric of time and space.

But it was a blink.  Only a blink, and in the next moment, she smiled widely at him, excited and energetic and lovely but… human.  More human than before, at least.

“Oh, Yuuri,” she rushed forward, clasping his hands in hers.  “I’m so excited to see you!  I’ve been waiting for _decades_.”

Yuuri blinked.  “Who are you?”

The god answered patiently.  “I have many names, Yuuri.  But you may call me Yuuko.”

Yuuko.  Yuuko, Yuuko, Yuuko.  He wondered where he’d heard that name, if he ever had.  Some of the Russian gods are nameless, indistinct concepts.  They existed for everyone, every citizen of Russia feared them and loved them and worshipped them like they should.  But sometimes, the names, the titles, they blurred and burned and were forgotten and reshaped, and for Yuuri he had been able to grasp the basics of them, but knew little really.

Yuuko.  He wondered if she were a bloody god, a deceitful god, a tragic god.  He wondered if she were here to pick him apart, bone by bone, scream by desperate scream, only to throw him back to the borders of his homeland.  He was a foreigner in these great, vast lands.  A speck before this mighty god.

“Oh, silly Yuuri,” she waved a flippant hand.  “It’s nothing so dark as that.  Simply put, you’re spoken for.  I chose you.”

Yuuri appeared to be getting paler by the second.  “Spoken for?”  Like in marriage?

“Of course, it doesn’t mean much until you choose me back.”  Yuuri blinked at her.  “Oh, don’t look so surprised.  You aren’t mine to choose, are you, Yuuri?  You do not worship the winter gods of this land.  You had your own gods, your own people, your own life.  But you are here, you had the intent to be here, and that was enough.”

“What—“  Yuuri was short circuiting.  “What does that mean?  You chose me?  Chose me how?”

“Well,” Yuuko released his hands, but stepped a little closer.  And then lowly, she whispered, “Choosing you means that you can have all of this.  You can have a warm home, clean clothes, plenty of food.”  Her eyes flickered over Yuuri’s face, a strange and dark look in her eyes, “You can have Victor.”  Her lips curled in a small smile, nothing wicked or suggestive, just a smile.  “Choosing you is like unrequited love.  It became my responsibility to look over you, protect you, lead you away from dangerous paths.  You never have to choose me back for that.  I’ll always be there.  But if you choose me—“

Yuuko stepped back, just slightly, and waved a hand over Yuuri’s head.  It was at the wave of her hand that a frozen crown perched atop Yuuri’s head.  A foreign prince in this winter land.

“If you choose me, you become my benefactor Yuuri.  I offer you all I’ve always given, everything you’ve stumbled upon in these last few days.  Live well, live happily.  All that I require is that you live, and you skate for me.”

And then Yuuko’s smile wilted, weighed down on by some invisible force.  The secrets of the universe swirled dark in those eyes, horrors beyond human comprehension painting the black of her pupils.  There was so much in that face.  More than Yuuri could understand, more than he wished he could.

Yuuri started, and for a long, horrible moment, he caught glimpses of shadowy futures, of desperate reaching hands and mouths left open from screams long dead and desolate, wasted corpses and—

And then there was the snowy clearing.  As flawlessly white and untouched as it had been the day Yuuri first saw it.  That same godly perfection, only it seemed a little more haunting than before.

Yuuri blinked, then, as a fleck of snow dashed in front of his eyes.  When he looked back, there was an air of sadness to Yuuko.  A grim, knowing smile had replaced that moment of horror, as she said: “Be my muse, Yuuri, when all else is lost.”

Yuuri stumbled backward.  Those images she’d shown him from futures not far off, vanishing in his mind near instantly.  A warning.  The terror of it still licked over his bones, the awful cold of premonition.

Yuuko stepped back as well, bowing her head ever so slightly to him.  A god, tipping her head to a mortal.  Yuuri thought his death would be very near indeed in that moment.  That the universe was certainly conspiring to end him in some fantastical way.  And the way Yuuko stared up at him, the curling tip of her mouth.

“You and I will be very important to each other, Yuuri Katsuki, I can promise you that.”  She said as she rose tall again.  “Call my name if ever you need anything.  Call my name if you come to a decision.  And—“ her eyes flickered meaningfully, “Call my name if ever you feel eyes that are not mine watching you.”

And then, off a little in the distance, the door to the cottage pulled shut and Victor’s merry footsteps came running.  “Yuuri!”  He was calling.

Yuuri turned to see Victor looking around for him, those blue crystals catching easily on his dark figure.  He waved, grinning in that same unabashed way of his.

“Yuuri!”  He called.  “What are you doing over there?  Let’s go skating!”

When Yuuri looked behind him one last time, the god had vanished and the pure white snow had left not a single trace she had ever been there at all.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think of the chapter in the comments! Any predictions? I love reading what you guys are anticipating. And every comment is appreciated, believe me.
> 
> As always, click [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/winter-gods) for the official Winter Gods tumblr account for updates on chapter releases and such!


	8. Phichit's Great Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phichit found love in Paris in the 20th century. But Love is a privilege for the dying, not the eternal.
> 
> Yuuri remembers him as he first meets Phichit's grandson, Nolan.

##  _Now…_

 

The morning that Yuuri left, it had been cloudy and windless.  Yuuri stood at the doorstep, moments from stepping out and going on his way, and Victor was just behind the doorway, looking anxious and trying to hide it.

“Three days,” Yuuri said.  “Four days tops, and then I’ll be back.”

Victor nodded, though it did nothing to soothe his nerves.

“Three days,” Victor repeated.  And then, visibly cracking a little, “Why three days?  Where will you be staying?  Do you have enough food to last you?  Are you sure you don’t want—”

“Victor,” Yuuri cut him off.  “I’ve been traveling a long, long time.  I’ll be just fine.  I’ll be back.”

Victor’s eyes told Yuuri everything.  That lost, desperate look.  Unhinged for Yuuri to see.

There it was.  That centuries old sense of loss that their two souls shared.  The fear of separation.  Never sure when the next time they might meet again will be.

Realistically, Yuuri knew that he would see Victor again.  Knew he’d be back in a few days time, and take Victor with him for a journey that would last only a lifetime before Victor had to return to the Earth and be reborn again so quickly after.  Yuuri knew they would see each other again, in this life and every one after this.

“Right,” Victor said, though he hardly sounded convinced.  “You’ll be back.”

“I will.”  Yuuri said.

Yuuri said goodbye to everyone in the house.  To Mila, who gave him a bone crushing hug, and Georgi, who clasped him on the shoulder and nodded sadly to him, as if he understood.  Yuri Plisetsky simply said, “See you later, Katsuki.”

Yakov said goodbye in true Yakov fashion.  He clasped Yuuri hard on the back, nearly knocking the air from his lungs, and told him to be safe before he walked back inside the house.

That’s how they got here, standing in the doorway together, alone.

“Yuuri,” Victor said.  “Yuuri.”

Yuuri’s eyes were on the silver Russian already, but his name on Victor’s lips sounded like music.  Sounded like an old melody that time had forgotten, that the world had put to rest.  But here it was, on Victor’s lips.

“Come back to me again,” Victor said.  “Four days this time, not five years.”

 _Come back to me._  Not a question.  He wasn’t asking.  It sounded so much like Victor, like the one Yuuri loved unfailingly, that demanding line.  So similar.  Yuuri had to look into those blue eyes just to be sure, just to check himself.

No.  Those eyes were young, open, yielding.  A Victor of the present, one who slipped easily into old Victor’s tongue.

It hurt Yuuri’s heart.

“Okay,” Yuuri answered softly.  “Okay.”

Yuuri stepped back.

Victor stepped forward.  His hand moved quickly, instinctively, and caught Yuuri’s in his grasp.

Yuuri watched without breathing as Victor brought the back of Yuuri’s hand to his lips.  Soft skin touched Yuuri’s knuckles, blue eyes peeked up at him through silver lashes.

When he straightened again, he didn’t drop Yuuri’s hand.  “This might be the last time I let you go, you know.  I don’t think I could watch you walk away again.  Not without me.”

For the first time in a very long time, Yuuri grinned genuinely.  “Well,”  Yuuri said slowly, those old worn eyes telling Victor more than words could express.  “You won’t have to worry about that for much longer, will you?”

“Yuuri…?”  Victor questioned, caught off guard.  His eyes bright, expression already shifting into that absolute joy.  But he wavered there, not certain if that was what Yuuri was actually trying to say.

“You’re coming with me, aren’t you?”  Yuuri asked expectantly.  “When it’s time for me to go again, you’ll come too?”

Victor was struck silent by the proposition.  Those beautiful blue eyes softening with awe at Yuuri, a gentle smile gracing his lips.

“Goodbye for now, Yuuri,” Was all Victor said in response.

Yuuri walked away from the orphanage that morning as the sun barely peeked over the horizon, the birds chirping in their high perches, the ground covered in an old layer of snow.  He walked away, and recalled to himself just how alike that smile, that loving look was to the very first Victor.

He told himself he was getting too old.  He must be imagining things.

* * *

 

When Yuuri reached the ancient clearing a day later, he strove through the perfect, untouched snowy field.  No animals lurked here, no bird chirped in the supernatural air.  It was just as skeletal and ominous as it had always been, had been since the day Victor died here.

He wasted no time.  He hated this place, hated standing in the open field because he could still feel those phantom godly gazes peering over him, into him, as though there was anyone left in the heavens to strike him down.  It reminded him too much of a time long since past, when all the skaters were gathered together, living for days on end with this sense of impending doom hanging overhead.  They’d all felt the end before it came.  Coming back here, even after all this time, he still felt it.  Remembered too well how it felt.

Yuuri stepped into the old house that afternoon, and his heart sputtered at the sight.  Nothing had changed.  Nothing _ever_ changed in this house.

There was still a pair of old boots by the door, a stack of books in foreign scrawl.  Books to help translate from Thai to Russian, from Gaelic to Russian, books even to translate Russian to Japanese.  These books were from a time before they were gifted with one common language, together.  Before they were touched by the gods to understand one another.  An attempt to be closer, in their small human ways.

Blankets were still strung out on couches where people had once sat and talked.  A fire still burned in the fireplace, always burning, even when Yuuri was never here.

No one had lived here in hundreds of years.

No one was left of them but Yuuri.

Slipping down the old hallway, fingers trailing along the walls, avoiding looking directly at the places where painted handprints had been left, trying to shake off the ghosts that danced around him.  He still heard laughter echoing in his ears, in his bones, felt a long dead joy in his soul.

 _Yuuri,_ he still heard Victor’s voice sometimes.  Turning in the dark hallway, glancing over his shoulder, for a moment he could see it.

For a moment he saw blue eyes and a gentle smile, silver hair that glimmered in the light.  And for a moment, the old Victor, the first Victor stood there before him.   _Yuuri_ , he said fondly, _Come on.  Everyone is waiting for us._

Yuuri smiled grimly at the figment of his imagination, reaching out a hand to push through the illusion.  He watched the mirage fall away like dust in the wind, watched Victor slip through his fingertips.

 _Yes,_ Yuuri thought.   _I suppose they are waiting for us, wherever they are.  Waiting for us to pass on._  Whether it be heaven or hell, or nothingness, that waited for the dead immortals beyond the veil, Yuuri thought sometimes that they would all be there waiting for him.  Waiting for the day that Yuuri fell away from this world, and Victor might finally go too.

There were many doors down the hallway.  Not just two.  A door for each of the skaters, a home for each of the god chosen.  Once upon a time they were occupied, and the house was always full, always bright, always loud.  There was always someone chatting, someone laughing, someone humming.  It had been home, once.  It had been perfect, once.

Now all that was left was a shell.

Just like Yuuri.

 

* * *

 

Yuuri took the hall down towards the end, didn’t look at Victor’s door before turning right into his room.  Once, Yuuri was not the only skater to return here every winter.  Long, long ago he used to travel with Phichit to this haunting cottage, used to skate his solemn routine alongside the Thai boy.  They used to sleep in the same room during their temporary stays, both terrified of being alone in this forsaken house.  Terrified of the old gods that tormented their nightmares.  Made them scream, made them mourn in the middle of the long nights.

It had been a long time since Yuuri had been able to wake up from those nightmares.

The room was the same.  The map on the wall still remained, but the map had expanded.  Yuuri’s travels had taken him everywhere, at this point.  He’d been overseas in the Americas, south to Australia.  He’d been anywhere that he could, as long as he could always make it back to Russia by December, to skate every year on Victor’s birthday, to secure another year, just one more year, of life as a pitiful immortal.

So the map was marked by inky lines, thickening with every retrace he made of those same roads and towns.  There were villages marked with stars, there were places marked with near translucent circles, marks to tell where some of Yuuri’s favorite villages had once been and were not anymore.

The bed was made, cleaned, fresh.  The paint on the walls never faded.  The air was quiet and still and lifeless.  Petrified.  Everything about this place seemed petrified.

Yuuri didn’t unpack.  He merely set down his packs, showered quickly, and headed to bed for the night.

He hardly slept at all, plagued by the sight of blood on pale skin, blood soaking into the white snow, and tears that dripped from crystal blue eyes as life left them.

 _Yuuri,_ Victor had cried.

_Yuuri._

 

* * *

 

_Nearly a Hundred Years Ago. . ._

 

*Warning: Historical Accuracy is Pitiful*

 

It was almost a hundred years ago, now.  One of Victor’s shorter lives.  It was before and during the war that would massacre billions, a war waged by Germans.

Yuuri was in the business of taking great care during this particular century.   The Japanese weren’t exactly everyone’s friend in the European theatre.  Even if Yuuri hadn’t been home in so, so long--lifetimes, even.  His heritage would never change.  His personal position in the war never mattered.  He kept his head low at all times, back then.  Wore thick clothes and heavy hoods, scarves and gloves to hide his complexion and glasses to draw attention away from his dark eyes.  In those days, Yuuri even bleached his hair in during some particularly dangerous travels.

Back to Russia.  He always had to go back to Russia.

These were the years that he thought, maybe just once, Victor might not meet him.  He didn’t know how old Victor was, or where he could be.  He could’ve been a soldier in the war effort, or a young boy back in the orphanage.  He could’ve been anything, anyone.  But Yuuri knew for certain that they could not meet this time, because Victor could not love him if they did.  The Japanese were public enemy #2, next to the Germans.  Even if Yuuri wanted no part of the motives of the Japanese, didn’t want to be sided with them just because of his ancient heritage--he knew it didn’t matter.  Victor would take one look at him and hate him, go for his throat if he were raised like any other Russian civilian.

But.

Yuuri had been in France the April after the war started, hiding out with someone Yuuko had told him would protect him.  Since he wouldn’t be able to return back to Russia with any necessary speed, and he had somehow landed himself in the middle of the Allied Powers territory, he had to be very careful about where he was seen.

This was a point in which his hair was bleached, his skin paled from his lack of contact with the sun but painted with a faint pink by the friend that hid him.  Between his friend and him, they hadn’t quite managed to make him seem European, but at least if his hood were pulled down, a less clever man would dismiss him.

Until the day that war hit France, and the Germans invaded the capital.

Yuuri thought that this was the end for him.  His friend hid him as best as he could.  Yuuko tried to reach out to him with feeble hands, the forgotten god reaching from the heart of Russian soil, but she couldn’t get to him.  Not in time.

It had been the middle of the night, then.  Yuuri was huddled up into the darkest, farthest corner of a basement, under blankets and jackets and he was sweating and dehydrated and sleepless and sickly.  Since the war began, food had become scarce, and Yuuri ate as little as he could bare so he didn’t burden his friend.

And then the screaming began out on the street.  A woman, crying out, begging, sobbing.  Yuuri, who was fluent in French at this point, could understand every desperate plea.   _Help me!  Help me, somebody, please!  Save me!_

Yuuri hated himself, more than ever, right then.  Hated his people.  Hated the agony, the bloodlust, the unfathomable nothingness that came from war.  Hated how helpless he was.  Because what had immortality given him, really, except grief?  Not even a means to help people, not even a means to help himself.  He was just waiting for mankind to shove him into the arms of death, since death could not reach him himself.

It took just under an hour for the soldiers to be at their door.  They rushed the house, and Yuuri could hear with hopeless clarity as his benefactor was shot and killed in his own living room.

They plowed tirelessly through the rest of the house, fumbling down the stairs and piling into the small basement.  One of the soldiers picked Yuuri out from the mess right away, shouting in garbled German to his comrades, aiming his gun right in Yuuri’s face.

There was so much fear.  So much terror mixed in with the bloodlust.  Yuuri closed his eyes at the sight of the gun, resigned in his hopelessness.  Resigned to the death that humanity would bestow upon him, the right to mortality that the gods had taken from him.

He closed his eyes, and hoped for swift death.

But that is not what he was given.  Clearly.  Otherwise the rest of this story would not exist.

There in his chest there was a sharp tug.   _Open your eyes.  Open your eyes.  Open your eyes._  The hand at his shoulder nudged him, urgent as it was terrified.

He opened his eyes just as the blankets were roughly torn from his body, just as rough hands gripped him and yanked him to his feet.  They tore the head covering from him, the dyed blonde hair spilling loose and his glasses jostled, just barely hanging onto his face.

Someone was screaming in violent German outside the house, too far away for Yuuri to really make sense of it while the men inside the house yelled roughly between each other.  Everything was too loud, too much, too chaotic.

Yuuri was thrown from his hiding spot, tossed at the staircase.   _Go!_  The soldiers screamed at him.   _Climb._

Yuuri was forced up the stairs, dragged out the front door and into the streets.

Yuuri wasn’t begging.  Wasn’t screaming.  But he looked around him, and he saw dozens of families being hoarded into the streets and there were mothers gripping their children, wailing their desperate pleas.   _Don’t take my children from me.  Please.  Please.  I beg of you._

The children weren’t taken, no, but the families were rounded up together.  And Yuuri was shoved there, too, into the mix.

 _Look, Yuuri, please._ An ancient voice at his ear implored.   _Look._  

Yuuri looked.  He searched quickly, frantically, for whatever it was that Yuuko was telling him to find.  She was trying to save him, even as she was rooted hundreds of miles away, in another country, another world.

At Yuuri’s knee, there was a small child gripping onto the leg of his pants.  The small hand was shaking terrible, taking small gasping breaths, those wide blue eyes peering with infinite horror at the men pointing guns at the crowd.  Yuuri stopped searching, then.

Being an immortal had made him so, so tired.  He didn’t mind, he supposed to end it here.

So he took off his glasses and bent down, no one noticing him in the commotion.  He spoke ever so quietly to the child, calmly, soothingly.  He offered the gentlest smile to the boy.

“Little one,” Yuuri whispered.  Yuuri’s broken heart splintered even further at the petrified look that the child gave him.  “It’s okay.  Everything’s okay.  It’ll all be over soon.”

Crystal ball tears slipped urgently down the boy’s chubby face, dripping off his chin and fell like rain to the stone street.  “Mama,” the boy cried.  “I want my mama.”

Yuuri’s hands shook, just a little, as he placed his glasses over the bridge of the little boy’s nose.  He looked at the boy over the top of the lenses and gave him one, final smile.  “It’s okay,” he said again.  “It’ll all be over soon.”

And for a moment, the child looked at him through the glasses,  distracted just for a moment.  The tears sputtered as the child looked at him, awestruck at the blurry world he was now peering at.

With the strength of Yuuri’s lenses, the boy wouldn't see the soldiers begin firing.  He’d see all the colors of the world, the blurry beauty of his city—just one last time.

And Yuuri would cover him with his body, when the bullets began to fly.

There was vicious shouting from over Yuuri’s head.  Screaming and wailing and a few warning shots had been released yet.

But Yuuri knew the position that the men had begun to take.  The soldiers began moving in to form a perimeter, guns aimed, faces snarling or blank.  Yuuri stood up, then, pushing the boy behind his back.

All the soldiers readied their guns.  “ _Ready!”_  One German soldier called to his men.

Yuuri did not look away.

And then the world exploded.

Bullets rained, but not from German guns.  Somewhere else, the sound of gunfire rang out.  People dropped to their knees in the chaos, unharmed but afraid.  Bracing.  The people braced.

The newcomers to the fight.  Were they friend or foe?

Allies.  Running through the streets, Yuuri saw a small army of Allies.  A small number of tanks followed the ranks, one flying a Russian flag and another an English flag.

Relief flooded Yuuri, but he knew he still had to go.  He was a Japanese man in France.  Regardless of whether the Germans had just been about to gun him down, he had to go.

So under the cover of chaos, Yuuri ran.

 

* * *

 

Yuuri returned to France at the end of the war.  Allied powers still prowled the Paris streets, guards against an already beaten enemy.  On edge at all times.  Tired, weary from years of war.  But they were glad to be there, glad to help out.

Everyone wanted the war to be over.

When Yuuri returned, it was to clear out his old friend’s apartment.  Now would be a good time to mention that this friend that had sheltered him had been Phichit’s grandson, a young man who had resembled his grandfather impeccably both in image and spirit.  And he knew what Yuuri was.  He knew what Phichit had been.  Immortals.  Cursed beings.

He had never met Phichit himself.  Yuuri had no pictures of Phichit either.

Yuuri hadn’t been shocked when Phichit’s grandson, Nolan, had reached out to him one cold winter.  Phichit must’ve told his son, or someone, the address of the small hut Yuuri resided in whenever he touched down in Saint Petersburg, where he stayed for only a few days before making the journey more inland of Russia to the cursed ice they had all skated on together once.

What Yuuri knew of Nolan was this:

Phichit had met Nolan’s grandmother in France some many years before.  They fell fast and hard in love.  Yuuri had never met the woman, but he’d heard of her.  Every year, Yuuri met Phichit at the cursed place that Victor died.  They were the last two skaters left by that point.  So every winter, on the miserable day they returned to skate for the diminishing winter gods, Phichit would tell Yuuri that he’d met a woman.  Over the years, Yuuri would ask about her.  He wondered if Phichit would leave her before she began to catch on to his Immortality, but he stayed.  Stayed, and they had two children together.  Yuuri never met them, either.

But closer to the end… Closer to the end, Phichit began mentioning her old age.  He spoke mournfully, solemnly.  He would look at Yuuri and Yuuri knew.  The end was coming.  His wife, Ella, was dying.

The fateful year came that Ella died.  Yuuri knew, because that was the year Phichit did not come back to the Cursed Ice.

That was the year that Phichit died.  That was the year that Yuuri became the last of the Immortals.

So Nolan knew very little of his grandfather.  He’d heard stories from his father, but Phichit had died when Nolan was very young.  So it came as a surprise to Yuuri when Nolan reached out.  He wrote in his letter that he would like to meet Yuuri, and that he was welcome to stay for as long as he’d like in his apartment in Paris.

Yuuri had been around for a very long time at this point.  He’d been everywhere, seen everything.  Loved the great love of his life for hundreds and hundreds of years, and mourned him just as well.  So there was nothing stopping him when he went to France.

It had been a horrible, bittersweet, painful experience.  Meeting Nolan, that is.

Yuuri had arrived at the address Nolan had written to him, and knocked.  The boy who opened the door could have been Phichit himself.  He had his grandfather’s warm, dark eyes and his bright, ecstatic smile.  He radiated that same kind of easy-going, loving charmingness that Phichit had when they were still very young in the world, when they had been skaters and glad of it.

Yuuri couldn’t breathe at the sight of Phichit.  Tears filled his eyes and spilled recklessly down his cheeks.  Yuuri apologized profusely for his reaction, but he couldn’t help himself.

His best friend had been dead for not half a century by this point.  It couldn’t have been more than thirty years since his passing.  But Phichit had been with him for centuries.  They traveled together after every so many decades, between the cycles of Victor’s life while Yuuri waited for the next one to arrive.  They met every winter, skated their remembrance for a time long since past together.

Nolan had only smiled.  “My father says I look just like him, too.”

That was their first meeting.  First words.

Yuuri would stay with Nolan for almost three years, leaving only twice briefly to skate on the Cursed Ice.  And then he left permanently midway into the war, fleeing after Nolan was killed.

So here.  Now.  Finally.  He was back in France, in Paris, at Nolan’s doorstep.  The door was crooked in its ridges, from where the soldiers had busted it in.  Yuuri put his hand to the door, that Sunday afternoon in September, 1945, and he stood there for probably far too long.  A hooded, bundled up figure standing on the front porch of a home that hadn’t been lived in for nearly two years now.

He was bound to draw attention to himself.

“Hey!”  A voice called in roughly accent French.  “What are you doing there?”

_There._

A tug in his chest.  A pressure that was as familiar to him as breathing.  A gentle hand at his shoulder, saying, _Yuuri._ Saying, _it’s okay._ Saying, _turn around._

He didn’t want to.  But under the circumstances, he couldn’t draw attention to himself.  The war may be over, but he was still Japanese in descent.  He was a public enemy in France.  He was an enemy to the Allies, even if he’d been on their side the entire time.

So Yuuri turned around.  His hood still masked his hair, his mouth was still covered by the traveler’s face mask.  All he seemed to anyone else was a bundled figure and a pair of glasses.  Nothing especially noticeable about him.  He was no one.  He walked by down the street and no one looked twice.

But of course, he noticed.

Facing him, at the bottom of the steps, was a tall young man with silver hair in a soldier's uniform.  He had a hand hovering over the gun at his hip.  His eyes were sharp, curious, wary.  In wartimes, no one trusted anyone.  Yuuri would never grudge him the cold caution that Victor turned on him then.

Victor rested his hand on his gun, a wordless warning.  “Take down your hood and your mask, sir.”

Yuuri wondered.

He wondered if Victor would be the one to kill him.  Here and now.  Shot for his heritage, shot for the face and the coloring he’d been born to, shot for the fear and the hysteria his culture had clouded around themselves.

Yuuri wished he hadn’t met Victor in this lifetime.  Wished Victor would’ve lived his life happily, freely.  Wished he could be pardoned of Yuuri, just once.

Yuuri took down his mask and his hood.  He pushed back the hair that fell into his eyes, and then held his hands out.   _I’m harmless,_ he gestured.

The strings of the universe twanged strangely around them at that moment as Yuuri watched Victor blink up at him.  “You…”  Victor started, startled by some nameless feeling within him.  By a depth of emotion he’d never felt before.  “Have we met before?”

Yuuri shook his head, and in French he replied, “No.”  He lied, and didn’t lie.  The truth was all strange and fuddled for someone like Yuuri.  “No, I don’t think we have.”

Yuuri stepped down on the stairs, walked carefully to the step above Victor.  He gave him a polite smile, peeled the glove off his hand and held it out.  “My name is Yuuri,” he introduced himself in Russian.  In Victor’s native tongue.  “Yuuri Katsuki.”

Victor blinked.  Once.  Twice.  Even, a third time.

Yuuri’s chest hurt at the sight.  The sheer adoration that clenched his heart in that moment.  It had been quite some number of decades since Victor’s last lifetime, since Yuuri had watched him pass through the veil into death from his bedside.

 _God,_ Yuuri thought achingly.   _I miss you so much._

Yuuri always missed Victor.  Even when every lifetime would bring Victor back to him, even when he stood here face to face with him, there was something so distant now about the silver haired man.  He would never be the one that Yuuri loved first, the one that Yuuri loved infallibly now.

But Victor smiled at him, then.  He took Yuuri’s outstretched hand with a firm grip and shook it.  And in Russian he replied back, “Yuuri,” he said with sudden and startling warmth, “My shift ends in a few hours.  Would you join me for a drink then?”

It was Yuuri’s turn to blink.

“I—”  Yuuri stumbled.  Blinked again.

It had been a very, very long time since Victor had been so forward with him.

But he had to smile.  Had to laugh, just a little, from relief and love and joy.  Yuuri didn’t see the loving gleam in Victor’s eyes at the sight of his smile, the sound of his laugh.  He didn’t catch all the old traits, all the original Victor that existed in this new Victor.

“I’d love to,” Yuuri replied, finally.  And Victor’s eyes lit like diamonds, like stars in the night sky.

 

Looking back, this was one of Yuuri’s favorite lifetimes of Victor’s.  Maybe it was because Victor had grown up completely without Yuuri.  Maybe it was because somehow, someway, meeting Victor that day had felt distinctly like the very first meeting they’d ever had.

But. _But._  [You have to remember,  I did say that this was one of Victor’s shorter lifetimes.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That little snippet of Yuuri and Victor in France after WW2 was so much fun to write. I'm gonna write a little more on that in the next chapter, I think. Please look forward to it!
> 
> Also I'm sorry this chapter took so long guys, I'm trying to pull myself together!! Don't worry, it'll get done. I won't abandon this story. Pinky promise.
> 
> Let me know what you think of the chapter in the comments! Any predictions? I love reading what you guys are anticipating. Every comment is appreciated, believe me.
> 
> As always, click [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/winter-gods) for the official Winter Gods tumblr account for updates on chapter releases and such!


	9. Nothing more, nothing left.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some lifetimes are better than others. Sometimes, they hurt more than others.
> 
> And sometimes, the past slips through, just a little, just enough.

The last time Yuuri had ever seen Phichit had been at the cottage, at their secluded clearing.  They were packed, ready to leave for again, ready for Yuuri to return to the Victor of the century, ready for Phichit to return to France to see his ill wife.  It had been a shadow in Phichit’s eyes the entire few days they spent there together.

Madeline was the light of Phichit’s life.  That had been obvious for years and years now.

But, Phichit.  Oh, how it burdened Yuuri to remember that last look Phichit gave him.  That empty, lifeless look he gave Yuuri.  There was nothing more in him.  Nothing left.

Yuuri knew it was the end.

“Yuuri,” Phichit said, and it was a goodbye without a goodbye.  Maybe Phichit hadn’t known it at the time.  But the years had dragged on by then, and Phichit was still only twenty even as it had been centuries and centuries past since he had celebrated his twentieth birthday.

“The ones we love, Yuuri,” Phichit said vacantly.  “It’s not fair.”  He said.  “None of this is fair.”

“We love too much or not enough, I think, Yuuri, after some time.  And I…”  A strong breeze ruffled Phichit’s clothes, his heavy jacket and scarf.  His face didn’t budge.

 _Nothing left._ Yuuri had thought.   _Nothing more._

“I couldn’t be the father my kids deserved.”  Phichit confessed, then, and it was a whisper, a confession, a barely there drizzle of broken hearted words.

“Phichit.”  Yuuri said, but nothing else.  He didn’t know what he could say.

Yuuri couldn’t imagine it.  Couldn’t see Phichit as a father, and he could.  But for Yuuri to see a father in Phichit, Phichit would have grays in his hair, and wrinkles by his eyes, and an aged, weathered look to him.  He would age, of course he would have aged.  He would have grown solid and firm, as older men do, and he would grow old with his wife, watch his kids grow with all his old pride.

Yuuri couldn’t see young Phichit, twenty year old Phichit, as a father.  It didn’t fit now.  But once upon a time, some many hundreds of years ago, Yuuri knew it could’ve.

“Goodbye, Yuuri.”  Phichit said.

“Goodbye, Phichit.”

The two friends would never meet again.

Yuuri would always regret not stopping him, not making Phichit promise to come back to him when it was all over.  But all the while, Yuuri knew it was time.

 _Nothing more._ Yuuri had thought.   _Nothing left._

 

* * *

 

The morning that Yuuri met Nolan, after he’d wiped his tears and pulled himself together again, they sat down at Nolan’s kitchen table and they introduced themselves.

Upon closer inspection, Nolan was not the spitting image of Phichit.  Nolan was lighter in skin tone, his hair just a few shades lighter in tone.  French heritage blending through Phichit’s Thai heritage.  But everything else, the warmth of his eyes and the cut of his jaw and the bright, joyous gleam of his smile, that was all the same.  All so charming.  So reminiscent.

They sat in Nolan’s kitchen, the morning light easing its way through the closed blinds.  It was still early in the morning, and the birds were chirping and the streets were near empty.  So the comfortable quiet was filled by Yuuri and Nolan’s quiet words.  Yuuri told Nolan a little about his grandfather, told him a few stories that made Yuuri smile and Nolan to watch on in awe.  For all the myth that surrounded his grandfather, no one told stories like Yuuri.  None of Nolan’s family members knew anywhere near as much as Yuuri did about Phichit.

“Tell me about Victor,” Nolan requested suddenly.  “My father told me very little about my grandfather, but you were mentioned many times.  And my grandfather, when he went, he didn’t leave much.  He left a few names, a few details in old notebooks.  With your name, someone named Victor was never far behind.”

That’s right.  Always inseparable.  Eternal.

Victor could never rid himself of Yuuri.

“Victor,” Yuuri started tentatively.  He glanced at Nolan’s patient expression, observed his kind eyes.  It felt almost wrong, looking into a face that was too much like Phichit’s.  It felt like Phichit had gone on the long track of rebirth, had come to Yuuri again in a new life, and wanted to be told of everything he had once been, everything they used to be.  It felt too much like a new cycle, like every cycle felt with Victor.

But this was not Phichit.

“Victor is the great love of my life.”  Yuuri told Nolan.  “He is the one thing tying me to this earth now.  There is nothing left for me but him.”

This was true.  But even then, Yuuri could feel himself slipping.  He could feel Victor slipping too.

“And my grandfather,” Nolan asked softly.  “It was not the same for him?  He could not wait for my grandmother?”

Yuuri smiled, not unkindly.  “It’s not quite the same for people like us, Nolan.  This is our curse, mine and Victor’s.  Victor will come back again and again, and I will meet him in every lifetime as if it is the first time, and each time I lose a little bit more of him.  That is our burden.  But Phichit met Madeline, and they fell in love, and Phichit knew that Madeline would not come back.  That’s how it is for the people we love.  We have them once, and that’s all we get.  And… that’s how it should be.”

Nolan looked pensive for a moment, eyeing Yuuri’s face with a hesitant curiosity.  Yuuri waited.

“Yuuri,” Nolan said, “I don’t mean to sound too forward, but have you ever tried with anyone else?  Have you ever loved anyone else?”

Yuuri shook his head, short and simple.  “Never.”  He said.  “There is no one else for me.”

“Ah.”  Nolan sat back in his seat, smiling in a warm, contented way.  “So that’s how it is.”

Yuuri didn’t think about what he meant, then.  But eventually it occurred to him that his question could have been an invitation.  An invitation he never would have accepted, but in retrospect it made him smile.  He recalled, somewhere lost in the stream of time, there had been an occasion when Phichit himself had offered a similar thing.  Yuuri had declined then too, and their friendship never skipped a beat for it.

Funny how Phichit and Nolan were both so forward, both so easy with their affections.  They backed off the same way, too.

“I look forward to getting to know you, Yuuri Katsuki.”  Nolan had told him once they moved Yuuri’s few things into his new room.

Yuuri smiled.  “As do I, Nolan.”

Looking back, Yuuri wished he’d had more time with Nolan.  Funny, he thought, when time was something he had far too much of.

 

* * *

 

When Yuuri walked into the bar that Victor had told him to meet him at that year, after the war, Yuuri realized what an awful idea this had been.  A Japanese man walks into a French bar filled with Russians post WW2… it sounded like the start of an awful joke.

He walked into a busy night at the bar, it seemed.  The place teemed with uniformed soldiers, the last remnants of the Allied powers still lingering in France as if to reassure all the political heads that if war to suddenly spark back up, they’d be ready to hold down the fort and prevent anymore massacres.  In the bar were also some regulars, some small groups of people that Yuuri had met here and there before the war, when Nolan had shown Yuuri around and introduced him to all the locals.

Yuuri kept his head down as he made his way across the room, sitting on a stool at the tail end of the bar counter.  He kept his jacket on, to draw less attention, to make it seem as though he’d just gotten there as he might be waiting there for a while.  He knew Victor, but he didn’t know _this_ Victor all that well.  There was a chance he could be stood up.

That was always the gamble with each new cycle.  Someone different always came around.  Sometimes things changed that Yuuri wasn’t always sure how to deal with.

The bartender recognized Yuuri the second he laid eyes on him.

“Jesus fucking Christ, is that Yuuri Katsuki in my bar?”  Said the broad man standing behind the counter.

Yuuri looked up in front of him and saw a man named Jeff Moreau leaning against the counter toward him.  He was grinning broadly at Yuuri, eyes alight with wonder.  It was never known who survived the massacre that happened that day, the one that killed Nolan, and who had escaped and never returned.  Yuuri supposed it was believed that he’d been killed.

“Jeff,” Yuuri laughed, relieved it was someone he knew.  “How’ve you been?”

Jeff reached over the counter and clasped Yuuri’s hand in a hard grip, a sort of manly greeting he supposed.  Jeff seemed like that sort.

“Fine, fine!  Business is great since the Russians and the rest of the Allies moved some of their troops in here.  We get a lot of their business.  Mostly the Russians and the Americans, if you’ll believe it.  Thought for sure we’d have at least one bad bar brawl with them, but we’ve had no such luck, thank God.”

Nolan and Yuuri had come drinking here a lot before the war.  This was where Yuuri heard all the recent news about the state of the war, about the building tensions and who sided with who.

“What about you?”  Jeff asked, lowering his voice a little.  “Awful what happened to Nolan.  It must’ve been horrible for you, when they got ‘em.  I know you two had been together for a good while.”

Somewhere along the line, people had started saying that Nolan and Yuuri were a couple.  Yuuri never said anything against the rumors, just because it certainly made him seem more trustworthy to be involved with a known member of the French community.  Nolan and Yuuri both had decided not to confirm or deny with anyone about it, because it was a form of security.

It wasn’t a far fetched idea.  They’d been living together for just about three years.  They went everywhere together.  Drinking in the evenings, eating out at restaurants.  It was an easy mistake to make, and they played it to their advantage.

“Yeah,” Yuuri murmured to him.  “I’m in town to settle the property now, you know.  It hasn’t been safe for me to come back since.”  Yuuri bit his lip, leaning closer over the counter.

“Jeff,” Yuuri asked lowly, softly, “would you know where they buried him?  I need to pay my respects.”

Another grave.  Another tombstone.  Another place to visit, to bow his head at, someone to regret having to leave behind.

Death couldn’t manage to grip Yuuri yet, but that didn’t keep him from grabbing vengefully at those closest to Yuuri.

Jeff nodded sympathetically.  “Of course.”  He scribbled down an address and slid it across the counter, just as someone down the bar called down to Jeff.  Jeff threw a quick gesture over his shoulder, telling them to wait one more second.

“Listen Yuuri,” Jeff said by way of goodbye, “if you ever need anything else while you’re in town, you know where I am.  Don’t hesitate.   _Au revoir_ , Yuuri.”

“ _Au revoir,_ Jeff.”  Yuuri bid back as Jeff took off back down the counter.

Yuuri sat in his reflective silence for a good, long moment.  He stared down the glass of water Jeff had set in front of him, tired already and wishing to go back to the apartment to sleep.

“So,” a familliar voice hummed to his left, a man already seated in the stool beside him.  “An ex-lover lost in the war, hmm?  That explains a lot about you, Yuuri.”

Yuuri went rigid.  Ex-lover?  There was a difference.  There was something so very awful about hearing a word like that from Victor’s lips.  Anyone else, any other stranger could imply such a lie, but hearing Victor say it, hearing him believe it--Yuuri didn’t think there was anything worse.

“Oh?  What does that explain?”  Yuuri deflected.

Victor turned on his stool, shifting his body so he faced Yuuri headon.  He leaned an elbow against the counter, his head leaned on a closed fist.  Victor smiled thoughtfully, near deviously.  “Why you’d be in France at such a conflicting time.  Why you’d be standing there staring at the face of a door that hasn’t been opened in a year at least, and trust me I know, I’ve been on guard in these streets for a good portion of it.  No one has been back in that house since the massacre a few years ago.”  Victor added one more thing, as though he couldn’t manage to keep it back.  “And you look so sad, Yuuri.  When you think no one is watching, you look absolutely empty.”

Yuuri blinked at him.  But Victor was already on to the next thing, he was signalling for Jeff to come down, calling down an order for two of some foreign named drink.  Jeff nodded to him, and within moments two drinks were slid their way.

Victor handed one drink to Yuuri, and lifted his own in the air.  He smiled at Yuuri, then, and it was an old smile, a knowing smile, even though he couldn’t know.  “Well,” he said, “a toast.”

“To what?”  Yuuri asked, but he smiled too.

“To the end of a war.”  Victor said, and his eyes flickered down Yuuri’s body boldly, down the lines of Yuuri’s neck, over his jacket, and down his thighs where his jeans hugged his body beautifully.  “And to beautiful strangers standing on deserted doorsteps.”

Yuuri didn’t think he’d blushed in decades, but he felt it then.  An old familiar heat in his cheeks, a stunned bashfulness that reminded him of being young and in love.  He grappled for something to say in response, but Victor beat him to it.

“Yuuri,” Victor said, voice low and smooth like silk.  Yuuri shivered at the tone, but raised his gaze to meet an icy blue eyed stare.  “Let’s have fun tonight.”

Yuuri could only nod, feeling strangely hot all of a sudden.

They drank to that.

They finished their first drinks with ease.  Victor called for a second round, winking at Yuuri with a gaze that was riddled with challenge.

 _Oh please,_ Yuuri thought amusedly, _I’ve been drinking for centuries.  Just try to get me drunk.  See who gets plied first._

Two drinks turned to four.  Four to six.  Yuuri didn’t know what the hell he was drinking but it was strong.

Victor was developing a beautiful blush across his cheeks, and he was laughing hysterically at something Yuuri had just said.  He was clearly drunk, or very, very tipsy.  But for someone still pretty young, Yuuri thought he was holding his liquor well.

“Yuuri~!”  Victor whispered to him, giddy and giggling and he was just so, so adorable.  Yuuri felt so, so warm.  He’d taken his jacket off a little while ago, but it did nothing to stifle the heat.  Victor kept running his eyes over Yuuri’s chest, eyeing the way the shirt hugged Yuuri’s toned chest, the way the top few buttons were undone and it showed a beautiful sliver of skin.  Victor looked starved, at one point, after he’d downed a drink and greedily eyed Yuuri again.

Maybe that was what pushed Yuuri to order three more of Victor’s strange drinks, and then downed them all himself.

Either way, somehow Victor had dragged Yuuri out to the dancefloor.  They were having so much fun, dancing so close together in the darkened room.  Closed in all around by other dancers, soldiers and local girls and local couples and just passersby looking for a good time.  The music was loud in their ears, alcohol warm in their blood.

Victor’s grin was a bright, beautiful flash of light in the dark.  His mouth was very, very close to Yuuri’s ear, whispering something, Yuuri didn’t know what.  But they were laughing and stumbling, hands grasping at one another’s clothes.  They lived in that moment, vivid with it, excited by it.

Yuuri couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this alive.

The night spread out before them, a moment and an eternity of potential.  Victor was murmuring Yuuri’s name low beneath the roar of the dancing crowd.  Yuuri was leaning his head against Victor’s chest, huffing hot air against Victor’s exposed neck.  And they stayed like that for a little while, dancing together, close together, drunk off each other.

It was late when Victor pressed his lips to the shell of Yuuri’s ear.

“Yuuri,” he whispered, “let’s go somewhere.”

Yuuri had an idea of where that somewhere should be, and what they should do there.

So they stumbled out of the bar, grasping at each other’s hands, leaning clumsily on each other.  “Yuuri,” Victor kept saying, “Yuuri, you’re so beautiful.”

And Yuuri kept laughing, kept thanking him, kept saying, “Victor,” saying, “you’re too beautiful, too.”

Yuuri loved him so, so much.

Back to Nolan’s apartment they stumbled.  In the door, stumbling up the stairs, stumbling through doors and into rooms.  Yuuri didn’t spare too much time looking around.  His bed was just the way he’d left it years ago, made up with his old sheets and all.

Victor kissed Yuuri in that room.  Kissed him with all the love and desperation that Yuuri knew had to be bubbling up under the surface right now.  A kiss that was long and deep, desperate and sure.  

 _I love you,_ Yuuri kept thinking.   _I love you, I love you, I love you._

“Yuuri,” Victor gasped out between kisses.  “Yuuri, is this okay?”

_Is this okay?  This is wonderful, perfect, amazing.  This is all I want._

Yuuri was kissing Victor’s neck, trailing lines down his throat, unbuttoning the top buttons on Victor’s shirt.  “Yuuri,” Victor said, his hands covering Yuuri’s but he lacked the conviction to stop him.  “Yuuri, this _house_ _—oh…”_

 _This house?_  Yuuri’s hazy mind took a moment.  Only a moment.  

And then he began to laugh.

He shouldn’t have.  It wasn’t funny.  It hurt him more than he would ever admit to remember Nolan right then.  To remember how he died in this house, in the kitchen where they shot him.

But it was the alcohol, and not the alcohol.  It was Victor, and it was Yuuri.  Because Yuuri was empty, and sad, and always, always so sad.  Because Victor had rushed into his life this time, this lifetime, just today, and swept him off his feet immediately.  And it was such a _Victor_ thing to do.  It was so _perfect._

Yuuri couldn’t bring himself to let this go.  Not then.  Not when it could slip from his grasp so quickly, like these things always had a tendency of doing.

So Yuuri pulled back, eyes hazy from the alcohol, hazy from the small tears that had sprung up at the memories.  But he smiled, he looked up at Victor and he smiled happily, gratefully.  “It’s okay.”  He said.  “I want this, Victor.”

And that was enough.

They fell into bed together, a mess of buttons and sleeves and jeans, giggles and moans, kisses and bites.  It was messy, chaotic, perfect.  Yuuri fell hard in love with it all, again and again.

In the morning, Yuuri woke up in Victor’s arms.

In the afternoon, they ate lunch together.

In the evening, Victor heard news that they would finally return home to Russia in the morning.

Yuuri was glad for him.  They exchanged addresses, numbers, stories _—anything_.  And in the morning, Victor left with his troops and a promise from Yuuri that they would see each other again.  Yuuri would be in Russia that winter, he promised.  They would see each other again.

Yuuri visited Nolan’s grave before he went again.

He stood tall among the tombstones, staring solemnly down at the dull stone that marked the place where Nolan now lie.

“Nolan,” Yuuri whispered over his grave.  “I wish you could have met him.  I think you would have loved Victor.”  Because Yuuri loved Victor.  And this had been one very special lifetime, to Yuuri.  The first of many that Yuuri had felt that spark again, that beautiful burning like stars and suns in the night sky, in love with the chaotic inevitability of it all.

It had been a very long time since Yuuri was so excited to return to Russia.

So that winter, Yuuri did go back to Russia.  He went to the address that Victor had written, and knocked gently at the door.

An old man answered.  He was balding, weary looking.  His expression was hard in an almost permanent way.

“Hello,” Yuuri started in Russian.  “My name is Yuuri Katsuki.  I’m looking for _—_ ”

The old man’s eyes widened, and Yuuri stopped talking, and then his eyes shut.  The old man shook his head with a look that Yuuri knew all too well, and let Yuuri inside the house.

Oh.   _Oh._

Of course.  Yuuri couldn’t help but think, as he free fell into numbness.   _Of course he would go so early.  Just when I’d finally felt like I’d gotten him back._

Victor died on the journey home from France.  A fit of disease hit their specific troop the hardest, and the majority died on the way back.  Victor was no exception.

Yuuri was led into a small bedroom towards the back of the house.  It was empty except for a bed and a desk.  The bed was made, the desk covered in dust.  No one had been home in a very long time.

The man pointed to the things spread out along Victor’s desk.  A ratty journal.  Some unstamped letters, never sent.

Letters to Yuuri.  And the journal…

“Take them.”  The old man said.  “All of them.  They’re for you.”

Yuuri nodded.

That was all he could say.  All he had in him.

He gathered the few things into his pack, apologized for the intrusion, and left for the cottage that killed Victor the first time.

 _Nothing more._  Yuuri thought.   _Nothing left._

He dared to hope, on that long journey back to the cottage, to the killing field, to the ice that never melted and the snow that never stained.  He dared to hope that the end would be coming soon for him, too.

 

Yuuko felt it, too.  Up there in the clouds, wherever she lived out her days, she gasped in that moment, clutching desperately at the hole she felt open within her heart, an echo of Yuuri’s agony.  She saw it all, saw all that happened in the past few months, then.  Saw, and knew she had to act soon.

Soon, before an ending came to pass that Yuuko couldn’t bare.

He was her lifeline, Yuuri.  So long as he walked the earth, so long as he returned once every year on Christmas day to skate for her, then she would remain a forgotten god upon this earth.  The last one left.  A twin existence to the last Immortal, Yuuri himself.

As the years passed on… oh, as the years went on, and on, and on.  There was ice inside Yuuri’s heart.  The ice of winter gods.  The thing that would kill Yuuri soon enough, if Yuuko didn’t do something.

He would be beyond thawing soon enough.

 

* * *

_Dear Yuuri,_

 

_We’re on the long journey home now from France.  I miss you terribly.  I hope to send these letters soon, too, whenever we find a post office.  But then, you may be moving from that house of yours in France soon, so maybe I’ll just wait to give these to you in person._

_The whole camp has come down with something awful.  I’m starting to get a little feverish myself, but I’m sure it’ll pass over soon enough.  After all, we survived a war.  What a joke it would be to die of a little cold just as we’re on our way home, huh?_

_Well, anyway.  I have a reason for writing this.  I had a strange dream last night, would you like to hear it?_

_I’ll tell you anyway, haha.  So, you were there.  It was the oddest thing.  It was quite a troublesome dream, now that I think about it.  We were_ ice skating _, of all the things.  It was amazing to watch.  You were a fantastic skater, Yuuri.  I could swear I heard music when you moved.  I think we ought to try ice skating sometime when you arrive in Russia._

_I was skating too, which is a funny thing.  I’m a horrible ice skater.  But I was pretty fantastic at it myself.  And we had such a great time there together, you know._

_There was a cottage, or some small house beside the lake that we skated on.  And inside the house were all these people!  But they must’ve been good friends of ours, you see, because we all sat down together and ate dinner.  We told jokes and we drank a bit together, and everyone spoke fluent Russian!  Even though near no one there was Russian but me, isn’t that awesome?_

_Yuuri, we spent all the time together though.  I was always hugging you and holding your hand, and we slept together in the same bed.  (I miss you.)_

_But… while it started out as a good dream, Yuuri.  Suddenly, everyone seemed really nervous all the time.  I felt it too, whatever was making everyone nervous.  You would spend a lot of time locked up in my room together with me, and you looked at me a lot like you were scared.  We never said about what though._

_And then, well… I guess I understand what we were scared of.  There was this woman there, outside when we were skating again.  But no one was skating, everyone was just standing around in the snow, and there were more people!  No one was smiling though, everyone looked really solemn.  The new people were wearing these beautiful white dresses and robes._

_I don’t remember very well what happened, but I heard you screaming.  Oh, Yuuri, it was awful.  You sounded like you were in so, so much agony._

_And then I saw you weeping, even though you were really blurry.  Everything was going a little dark for me, by then._

_And then I woke up, screaming myself.  That was when they discovered my fever, unfortunately.  But I’m sure I’ll be fine.  I’ll be better in no time at all._

_What a dream, though, hmm?  A little rattling.  I didn’t quite know what to do with myself afterward, but I wanted to write it down so I didn’t forget it.  I thought for a little while that I shouldn’t tell you, and maybe I won’t send this letter after all._

_But this is for myself then.  No need to worry you.  I’ll see you in a few months, my dear Yuuri._

 

_With love,_

_Victor_

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aww I loved writing about this Victor. He's adorable. 
> 
> Let me know what you think of the chapter in the comments! Any predictions? I love reading what you guys are anticipating. Every comment is appreciated, believe me.
> 
> As always, click [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/winter-gods) for the official Winter Gods tumblr account for updates on chapter releases and such!


	10. Christophe Giacometti

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri goes back to the ice, and leaves with instructions from Yuuko. What is she planning? Could the end be finally within grasp?

## Chapter Ten

 

There was a god in the heart of the mountains of Russia, in the vast wintery unknown, that only Yuuri knew her name now.  She was more beautiful than anything Yuuri had ever seen, anyone he had ever known.  She was an Ancient.  She was a god.  She was Yuuri’s benefactor, the woman that secured eternity for Yuuri.

She was the only god that Yuuri had ever seen cry.

Some would imagine that Yuuri hated Yuuko, despised her for the eternity he was forced to suffer, but they couldn’t be farther from the truth.  Yuuri loved Yuuko.  She was the only constant in his ever changing life, in this world that never stayed still, all the people he loved that always faded in time.  Yuuko never changed, and because she didn’t change, neither did Yuuri.

It’s hard to describe, exactly, how their bond works.  But once, they were not the only ones.  Each of the skaters, once upon a time, had been bonded to a god.  That was how they lived, how they survived.  The skaters gave up their mortality to the winter gods, in exchange for immortality, in exchange for time.  All they ever asked was that the skaters stayed to skate for them.  Although some gods… some gods asked for more.

But Yuuko had loved Yuuri since he was young, since the first time that Russian traveler had touched Yuuri, since Yuuri’s first Russian word had left his tongue.  She used him to live, and he used her.  Mutual dependency.

Yuuko had been there the day that Victor died.  She had protected Yuuri, then, and has ever since.  She has been his only companion as the other Immortals died off, as time wore on and the Immortals either stopped caring and stopped coming to the ice to skate, or their winter gods had stopped caring enough to stop protecting their Immortal kin.  Either way, through the many centuries since the skaters had all last gathered together, their numbers had dwindled.  Now all that was left was Yuuri and Yuuko.  No god or Immortal remained but them.

And so here he was again, in the middle of the winter at the edge of the frozen lake.  Yuuri stood like a black silhouette against the pure white snow, hands tucked in his pockets, glasses left back in the house.  Today he would skate, as he did every year.  Tomorrow he would be trekking back through the endless woods, back to Victor.

Yuuri stepped onto the ice, his ordinary shoes vanishing and in their place black boots bottom-lined with silver blades.  Ice skates.  The original ice skates.

And so Yuuri skated.  From sun up to the afternoon, constant and brutal, feet carrying him with unnatural grace and superhuman certainty.  If anything in this world had yet to fail him, it was skating.  All else, everyone else.  Even the gods were more human than they would ever have dared admit.

He skated like he was throwing himself off the end of the earth, like he was throttling himself over the edge.  Like there was nothing left holding him here.

“Yuuri,” a gentle, quiet voice said to him when he at last paused for breath.

Gasping, Yuuri turned to face the god he knew would be there.  The only one besides him who had ever known about this place.  He smiled a little.  “Yuuko.”

There was something tragically unique about Yuuko.  Something that had changed in her since the day Yuuko became the last of the winter gods, and Yuuri became the last of the Immortals.

Because every time since that Yuuri came to skate, he would find tears streaming down that cold, beautiful face.

Tears of an Ancient.  Tears of the last of the winter gods.  Tears out of respect for Yuuri.

So there, beside the lake that day, was his beautiful benefactor.  The last of her kind, her face wet with sorrow and eyes as mournful as Yuuri felt.  Yuuri didn’t know it then, and perhaps would never know at all.  When Phichit passed, he took his god with him--but what Yuuri didn’t know was that the god bonded to Phichit had been Yuuko’s lover, her husband, Takeshi.

When Yuuko cried, she cried for Yuuri.  She cried for Victor.  And she cried for Takeshi.

Sometimes, Yuuri thought when he was back in that cottage for the winter and the petrified silence kept him up, Yuuri wondered who they were keeping each other alive for.  Yuuko protects Yuuri to keep him alive, to keep herself alive.  But Yuuko had no one left.  There was no reason to continue this game, to continue going on in this world and this age that neither of them belonged to.  All Yuuri had was Victor, and even that… Even Victor was becoming less of the man Yuuri had fallen in love with all those centuries before.

“Yuuri,” Yuuko whispered, a little fond and a little sad.  Yuuri understood her better than anyone else ever could.

But Yuuri stood there, at the lake’s edge, and he stared at the beautiful god.

“Tell me about Yuri.”  He said to her.

She smiled at him.  “You’ve spoken with Yura, hmm?”  She said quietly.

He nodded.

Yuuko walked onto the frozen lake, the beautiful length of her gown seemed to rehem and reform into a white jacket and pants, and a white pair of ice skates covered her feet.  Beautiful, as always.

“Skate with me, Yuuri.”  Yuuko told him, holding out her hand.

He took it, and so they did.  The two skated slowly, easily.  Yuuko was just as sure-footed as he was, and he wasn’t surprised.  A goddess in her domain, naturally.

The sun began to lower in the sky, touching the treetops, glaring out onto the ice.  Smoke billowed from the cottage chimney, a fire starting of its own accord to warm the house.  Yuuri would have to go in soon, and Yuuko would have to go.

“Do you like Yura?”  Yuuko asked him, eventually.

The question caught Yuuri off guard.   _Do I like him?_  Yuuri didn’t know.  Didn’t think he’d ever contemplated liking anyone, or caring about anyone other than Victor.

“Yes,” Yuuri said tentatively, after a moment’s thought.  “Yes, I think so.”

Yuuko hummed, nodding a little.  “I don’t think you two know what to make of each other.”

“He feels… like me.  But different.”

Yuuko only hummed again.  “Yes, you’re both unlike anything the world has ever seen before.  You’re the last of your kind, he is the first of his.  And yet… still so similar.”

Riddles.  The both of them must’ve been so mad that they’d begun talking in riddles.  Only he wished he could tell what she was actually saying with them.

“Why is he different?”  Yuuri said at last, desperate to know what it was that brought his existence to pass.  Desperate to know _why_ another god need exist.

Yuuko smiled out at nothing, staring at nothing.  “We are the gods of winter’s past.”  Yuuko breathed out, then, as though letting go of some tremendous burden.  “He is the one who’s come to take our place.”

_What?_

“What?”  Yuuri whispered.

She stayed silent.

“Yuuko,” Yuuri forced them to a stop, turning to face her on the ice.  There was a terrible silence in his blood, a hush that fell over the forest.  “Don’t tell me--”

But Yuuko’s voice suddenly grew sharp.  “Yuuri.”  She cut him off.  “Do you trust me?”

He only stared at her, but his silence wasn’t enough.

 _“Do you trust me?”_  She demanded.

He nodded mutely.  They were one and the same, Yuuri and Yuuko.  Never one without the other.  They could not exist independently of each other.  He had to trust her.  His life was her life, and vice versa.

She gave him a solemn, sobering look.  “Good.”  She said.  “Then believe in me, Yuuri, as you always have.  Trust that I will never do you wrong.”

He did.  He wanted to.  He had to.  Yuuko was the only person Yuuri had left to trust, the only one who had never betrayed him or left him or died before him in his long, endless life.

They skated on.  The gentle glide of their feet across the ice, the easy companionship of it all—it made Yuuri smile softly, despite himself.  Skating came easy to him, natural after all these years.  But the ice was lonesome and desolate.  Nothing grew from it, no warmth came from it.  The ice beneath his feet was exactly the same eternal make as the ice that grew in Yuuri’s heart.  But skating together—skating with Yuuko—it reminded him of why he’d begun skating in the first place.  The peace that could be found in skating with others, the home he’d found in the people he’d skated with once.  Those were better days.  Kinder days.  Yuuri had not known such beauty since.

Eventually, the sun passed below the trees and farther below the horizon.  Yuuri and Yuuko glided to the lake’s edge and stood there on the banks.

Yuuri looked at his benevolent winter god.  “Yuuko,” he said warmly.

“Yuuri,” she smiles, “when you next see, Victor.  Tell him this for me, won’t you?”

When she relayed her message, he almost asked why.  But the look she gave him, like this was a gift.  He didn’t question it.  He agreed to tell him, and bid Yuuko farewell.  

He walked to the cottage entrance, put his hand on the knob but paused.  Paused, inexplicably, and turned.

Standing there out on the ice was Yuuko, back in her lovely white dress and barefoot.  She only stood there, head turned to stare up at the sky.  And there she watched the stars, the endless darkness spread out into the woods somehow made her seem brighter where the starlight touched her skin.  The ethereal light shone on her dress, and she seemed to glow there.  A goddess in her realm.  The last of the winter gods, a queen in her own right.

Yuuri ached at the sight, how lonesome she looked.

But Yuuri didn’t stay.  Didn’t watch.  He couldn’t bring himself to disturb the perfect silence, the image of loneliness.  He thought, privately, that if he stepped into the picture, the beauty would be lost.  That if he stepped back onto the ice, the spell would be broken, and maybe so would he be.

In his own mind, Yuuri said a silent farewell to Yuuko.  But outwardly, he said nothing as he turned and went inside the cottage.

 

* * *

 

The road home for Yuuri is always hard.  There’s something about still very deeply archaic about the woods there, far deep into Russia where magic still toils.  Yuuri finds his way home each time through the map of the stars, through the swinging guidance of his compass.  He’s gotten lost many, many times, but only ever on the way back.  After all, once upon a time, the field of ice was a place he had never been meant to leave.  He’d been meant to stay, skate and be.  

But he walked and walked, on and on, through the thick of the unknown woods.  He walked from sunrise to sunset, pack slung over his shoulders, his thick winter coat wrapped up to under his chin.  Even after so many years, the chill of winter still wracked his bones.  He was still human, after all.

His way home was long.  Always long.  Miles and miles blurred throughout the endless hours he spent walking, the trees towering over him with that same dark, looming expression.  Yuuri shivered beneath his many layers of clothing, shivered from a chill he’d caught in his heart hundreds of years ago that had never left him since.

He touched down in town, finally, at nightfall.  He could only hope he knew the way back to the orphanage in the dark, only hope that he would not be lead farther from his destination.  The sameness of the forest in the dark could lead him home, or very, very far from it, from Victor.

He mulled over the word Yuuko had told him to say.  Mulled over the old significance of it.  He wondered why.  He wondered and wondered, at the handful of words that Yuuko had whispered to him.  About Yuri Plisetsky.  About the young god sent to keep watch over Victor.

_He is the one who’s come to take our place._

Yuuri couldn’t begin to understand what that might mean.

But as he wandered, his feet led him down the long path to the orphanage.  The looming house of the orphans looked down on him, before he knew it, all the windows bright with light.  Figures shifted behind the curtains, spikes of voices and excited yelling could be hardly made out from the front yard.

Despite himself—despite years and years of this push and pull, go and come back, love and lose and love again—Yuuri managed to feel nervous.

He repeated the single, instructed word over and over in his head.

He raised his hand to knock against the door, rapping quietly.  Crickets cooed from the shadows, the wind rustling Yuuri’s long-since-trimmed hair.

Finally, the door swung open, the voices beyond the door quieting, the bright lights from inside washing over the lonely dark surrounding Yuuri.  Standing there in the doorway, expression caught, eyes wide and bright and _caught—Victor._

For a moment, the longest moment, their eyes locked, eternity suspended, Victor’s silver hair and the angle of his jaw highlighted a brilliant gold, stuck in the fraction of a second, everything about Victor called out to Yuuri, screaming home home home, doomed to never end _—_

Yuuri spoke so, so quietly, his voice broken by an emotion so sudden, so powerful—he says: “ _Tadaima_ ,”

A hesitant pause, nothing changes, no one shifts, the look on Victor’s face is unaffected, clueless, he doesn’t know Japanese, of course he doesn’t, but then _—_

Victor _melts_ .  Victor smiles, _smiles_ this old, precious smile.  [Yuuri is burning, not breathing, suspended in the universe, freefalling into this overwhelming, terrifying, beautiful feeling in his chest.  So familiar, _so familiar._ ]  And Victor says, just as soft, but strong and firm and enough that the crickets and the wind and the winter noise falls away.  He says: “ _Okaeri,”_

There.

The world trembles, quakes, undulating.   _Shivers_ at the word, the tone, the look.  There is _nothing_ that means more, _feels_ more, than that one word, like hundreds of years compressed, combined, joined at last, at long last.

And then the world stops on a dime.  The universe pausing, waiting, listening.  All that is and was and ever will be crains to listen.  Even the wild winter night hushes at that voice, that tone, that ancient melody laced between words and notes and phrases.

The unbearable silence fills eternity.

 _“Victor,_ ” Yuuri whispers at that, heart lifting uncertainly in his chest.  Impossible, he told himself.   _Utterly impossible_ —

But then Victor’s expression shifts, those blue eyes dulling, the effect of time and death and life wearing on an old picture, becoming just another weary copy of a near forgotten concept.  No one remembered the old Victor but Yuuri.  To anyone else, the very first Victor, the one that Yuuri loved unfathomably, had never existed at all.

Victor— _the real Victor,_ the one that looked Yuuri in the eye not a moment before _—_ was gone.

“Yuuri?”  Victor’s voice, the young voice, the temporary, mortal, airy, pretty, curious voice had returned.  “Did I say something strange?”

Yuuri’s eyes pricked, then.  Dusty, centuries old tears gathered in the corners of his eyes.  They gleamed by the light coming through the open door, but didn’t fall.

“No,” Yuuri said quietly.  “Nothing at all.”

 

* * *

 

Victor led a silent Yuuri into the house by the hand, gripping them tightly, firmly, as though he knew that in a moment Yuuri might slip away from him.  Yuuri had been away for too long.  Victor had spent every passing night shivering without the Japanese traveler at his side, every moment glancing towards the door, every second a waste because the one he cared for unfathomably was not there to share it with him.

Victor had known no fiercer cold than what it was to be without Yuuri Katsuki.

So Victor tugged him along, inside the house, where Yuuri would warm up, would look less ill.  Victor couldn’t know that his paleness wasn’t particularly from the cold, but from the moment that had passed without Victor’s knowledge.

Inside, inside, further into the house Yuuri walked behind Victor.  His many layers of clothes and the pack on his back felt so, so heavy now.  He felt heavy with it all.  He found himself only wanting to crawl into bed and drift away until enough time had passed that he could convince himself he’d imagined hearing Victor’s voice as it was, as it had been in the beginning.

But there was laughter coming from the dining room, Georgi’s enthusiastic chuckle and Mila’s gentle giggling, with Yakov’s low murmuring and someone else.  Someone Yuuri had not met before in this house.  A voice that, through the walls, was deep and smooth and slow.

Yuuri’s hand was icy in Victor’s warm, tight grip.

They neared the room, closer and closer, down the dark hallway toward the bright doorway to the dining room.  Yuuri felt a little like he was underwater, hearing the joyful masses of Yakov’s orphanage in all their easy contentment from a mile away.  All he saw was Victor’s eyes just then, just a moment ago.  All he felt was Victor’s firm hold on his hand, his only source of warmth.

Something in the air twanged strangely.  Closer, closer and closer the kitchen came.

Victor stopped abruptly just before the doorway, the sound of Yuuri’s heavy boots had already signalled to everyone inside the dining room of their presence.  The look on his face was strangely intense as he whirled it on Yuuri.

“Yuuri,” Victor said to him.  “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

And with that, Victor tugged him into the dining room.  Light washed over Yuuri, who’s eyes had been adjusted to the dark for hours now, and momentarily blinded him.

The sound of a chair scraping against the wooden floors sounded sharply in the quiet room.  Mila made a startled sound, and Yuuri finally looked up.

There was a sudden ringing in Yuuri’s ears.

“This is—” Victor began, but the other voice cut him off.

“Yuuri Katsuki.”  The voice sounded breathless, awash with disbelief.

Yuuri froze.  Eyes wide, every muscle in his body tense with shock, sodden with impossibility.   _No_ .  He thought.   _No, it can’t be._ Two ancient voices brought back tonight, observed by the last remaining ancient himself—it was impossible.

 _“Christophe.”_ Yuuri whispered.

  


* * *

  


Christophe Giacometti.

Every gaze at the table flickered between the two foreign guests, not knowing how to act, what to say, what to do.  Victor’s grip had not loosened on Yuuri’s hand, but he hadn’t moved either since stepping into the room.

But Christophe.  He… Yuuri felt the shock tunnel down his spine.  Because Christophe looked the same.  Almost exactly the same.  The soft hazel of his eyes had dulled, and his hair, which had once been a simple, solid brown, was now two toned blonde and brown.  But other than that.  Christophe Giacometti was intact.  Preserved in the hundreds of years it had been since Yuuri had seen him last.

And those soft hazel eyes… Yuuri could have cried.  He really could have, had the shock not overwhelmed him.   _Christophe knew Yuuri._   **_Remembered Yuuri._ ** They were gentle and knowing when they peered at Yuuri, quiet in their understanding, subdued in their sympathy.  Like he saw everything as it was, saw Yuuri for the fake he was pretending to be, for the lie he was weaving to Victor.  Like he knew that Yuuri was the very same from centuries before, who held Victor as he died, who had caused such an end to the one he loved above all else.

 _Oh god.  Oh god oh god oh god_ —

But those eyes.  Those were not the eyes of an Ancient.  Yuuri knew what those kinds of eyes looked like.  He saw them in his reflection any time he bothered to look, he saw them when he looks Yuuko in the face, he’d seen them in Phichit’s eyes before he died.  But Christophe’s eyes were not like Yuuri’s, or Yuuko’s, or even Phichit’s.  They were like Victor.  Faded and jaded, like a copy of the original: a new life.  A mortal version.  Born again and again but… somehow he remembers.  Remembers what Victor never could.

Yuuri wanted to ask him so many things.  Felt the overwhelming desire to question everything.  From how he knew, how he remembered, what he had told Victor, what he thought about Yuuri playing this part, what he thought of Yuuri now, after all that had happened, after all Yuuri did then—there was too much.  And yet his jaw locked up, and his voice failed on him, and he knew rationally he couldn’t ask any questions now.  Not in front of everyone who knew nothing of who Yuuri was.

So Yuuri did what he could to recover himself.  To plunge his moment of weakness back into the dark.

“You’ll have to forgive me, Mr. Giacometti.  I’ve been traveling for several days, it seems I’ve forgotten myself.”  Yuuri tried to swallow the grief that threatened to show on his face, but he struggled.  “You just… you look so much like your father.”

Yes, because Yuuri didn’t know Christophe.  He knew his father, who had died some many years ago.  He had never met Christophe Giacometti, not in this life.

 

Christophe Giacometti peered at Yuuri from across the room, and his eyes were sad.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for my extended absence. I've been struggling.
> 
> As always, click [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/winter-gods) for the official Winter Gods tumblr account for updates on chapter releases and such!


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